One could get as far as to state that in the 1920s, the signature is an integral part of the decor.Īuthentification. See as an example of this tendency the relief (mould blown) plums vases. Later Gallé vases proudly sport their signature, most often raised as etched in cameo (rather than engraved on hollow) on a clear, if peripheral, part of the background, for better contrast. The signature must also be easy to spot : no more signatures under the base of a vase (a practice which ceased after the opening of the cristallerie in Nancy in 1894 ), or hidden in the decor pattern as to be almost invisible. So, every item must be signed, of course, but it’s not enough. Identification: First, it identifies the item’s maker.
What’s the function of the signature? One can list four core functions of the signatures in Gallé’s case : Some preliminary remarks on the signature. With that in mind, a close reexamination of the different signatures in light of the Établissements Gallé’s history can lead to a reconstructed chronology of these modifications, and then of the glass production thus marked. The Gallé name was of course more than ever a core value for the Etablissements Gallé after 1904, their identity : it had to be protected and exploited at the same time, which made the matter of the signature all the more crucial.
But it perhaps stems also from an insufficient effort to relate these switches of signatures to the company’s history. The many new signatures introduced in the 1920s remain unexplained and undated beyond this general qualification.įor the most part, this lack of data is of course the product of the loss of the Gallé archives. The First World War is considered as a major break in the company’s history, reflected in a change of signatures – mistakenly as we shall see – and that’s about the extent of the common knowledge on the matter. And yet, beyond the datation of the “Gallé with star” signature immediately after Émile Gallé’s death (with a disputed chronology), very little is known about the chronology of the various signatures in use from 1904 to 1936. The Établissements Gallé signatures typology is known, but what about its chronology? There are almost countless Gallé signatures catalogues, from Ada Polak’s seminal article in 1964 to the exhaustivity seeking reference tables of Philippe Olland in 2016. The main Gallé signatures after 1904 (from left to right : Budapest Museum of Applied Arts 68.247.1 KA Aguttes lot 133 lot 132, 138). The structure of ionic glasses, being dominated by Coulombic interactions, lends itself to high compositional flexibility and therefore, creates significant opportunities in the search for optical materials with enhanced transmission windows, fast ion conductors, phase-change materials, or, e.g., adapted solders, hermetic seals and dielectric insulators.Fig. We also demonstrate the relevance of the adjacent fields of ionic liquids and amorphous metal organic frameworks, and highlight possibilities for fruitful interdisciplinary exchange. Specifically, we discuss the importance of non-percolating topology to dynamic properties such as mechanical behavior, ionic conductivity, relaxation processes and crystallization. By reviewing the compositions and properties of many simple and complex glass-forming salts, we discern the commonalities shared by ionic glasses and their unique characteristics as compared to other classes of glass. First, we will reassess Zachariasen’s and Hägg’s rules for conventional glass formation in an attempt to broaden the current understanding of glass formation to include ionic glasses. Here, we will critically review ionic glasses as a distinct group of materials in which structural predictions are complicated by the dominance of long-range bonding interactions which lack directionality. Most prominently, this applies to the class of ionic glasses, presently emerging as a separate class of amorphous materials, which includes classical invert glasses, geometrically frustrated compounds, mixtures of simple salts and ionic liquids, and organic–inorganic hybrids. Such theoretical frameworks break down for the wide range of glass-forming compositions in which covalent bonding does not percolate and, therefore, there is no network in the classical sense. In the most common models of glass structure, a three-dimensional network backbone and less-localized interstitial species are taken as the fundamental constituents of a glass. Due to the absence of microstructure and virtually infinite compositional versatility, glassy materials are perfect candidates for rational methods to predict structure-property relationships.