Rene Lalique Chypre Perfume Bottle For Coty Designed 1912

Description

Heading : A Chypre perfume bottle designed by Lalique for Coty
Date : Designed 1912
Origin : Combs-la-Ville. Paris. France
Colour : The bottle is clear and frosted. The stopper with salamanders has a charcoal grey stain
Body : An organic shape reminiscent of cactus
Base : Incised signature Lalique moulded marks COTY FRANCE
Glass Type : Lalique demi-crystal
Size :    23.5cm to top of stopper ( this is the largest of four sizes produced)
Condition : Exemplary
Restoration : None
Weight :  406 grams

Eric Knowles Comments. During the past four decades I have only handled three examples of this perfume bottle in this size which no doubt was intended to contain Eau de Cologne. I have always considered this to be a relatively underrated bottle and stopper. yet one of his most accomplished and earliest designs in as much it demonstrates Rene Lalique’s ability to transform a utilitarian object into a subtle sculptural form and in my humble opinion an undisputed masterwork of the applied arts.

The stopper moulded with opposing and contorted salamanders. also recorded as lizards. echoes Lalique’s use of mirror imagery prevalent in his much earlier and celebrated jewellery designs that were  greeted with much acclaim at the Paris Exposition of 1900. The actual bottle also appears to have caused a certain amount of confusion with regard to the pronounced and graduated relief moulding applied to each corner having sometimes been misinterpreted as thorns or. in one case. the dorsal ridge found on the spines of reptiles. Lalique however has chosen to use the broad and tapering leaves of a tropical succulent plant that he was to use in later years. from 1929. in the powerful organic vase retailed under the title of ‘Languedoc’ (Marcilhac 1021) and reprised in recent years by the present day Lalique Glassworks.

The ‘Lalique’ only etched signature belongs to a limited number of his early creations that lack the later and vast  output where the use of the ‘R’ before Lalique became the normal signature until his death in May 1945. Finally and of equal importance that both the underside of the bottle and the stopper are etched with the identical number 33. confirming that both are original to one another.