Art Nouveau table with an elliptical top, in the form of a tray with handles. Inlaid, it shows a subtle flower variation with small butterflies. The signature of the creator of Emilé Gallé and a French sentence are also visible on the table top. The table legs are slender, connected by an arched traverse.
The table top is made of walnut and its legs are made of beech.
This is an example of meuble parlant, from fr. "talking cupboard". The inlaid sentence "Souci de plaire" woven on the table top suggests taking care of pleasure or bringing it to its owner. Height: 82.5 cm Tabletop dimensions: 71cm x 42 cm Preservation condition: the tip of one leg has been damaged, 1.5 cm is missing / Table, Émile Gallé (1846-1904), art nouveau, Nancy, circa 1900. / Émile Gallé (1846-1904) - a famous designer of porcelain, glass and furniture. The precursor of Art Nouveau in Nancy, and the later director of the famous École de Nancy, hung the motto over his workshop: "Our roots are in the depths of the forests, on the banks of the springs, among the moss". Numerous artists from Nancy, active in various fields of art, drew abundantly from flora and fauna, especially those from Lorraine, thus expressing, on the one hand, a romantic longing for contact with nature, and on the other, local patriotism. Individual elements of furniture, such as legs in a library from around 1900, refer to furniture from the Far East, and floral and zoomorphic motifs always play a dominant role in them, such as in a chair with a backrest in the shape of leaves or the famous bed from 1904, the artist's last work, in which butterflies made with the technique of inlay and inlay symbolize dawn and dusk, and maybe also birth and death. Émile Gallé believed that the greatest happiness for an artist-craftsman is the joy of work.
