François-Théodore Legras

Authors: Marie-Françoise Michel, Jean-François Michel, Dominique Vitrat, Jean Vitrat

Published in: 2012

Type: Monography 

Editor: Deux-points

Number of pages: 380 pages 

Dimensions: 21 x 28 cm

ISBN: 978-2-7466-4005-4

Price: €60 

Summary:   Whereas Gallé, Daum and other Lorraine-based glassmakers were often painted in books that were as perfect as their glass artwork, Legras could be compared to a vase broken into a thousand pieces. Many were recognised by glass specialists: bottles with subjects, catalogues, Montjoye vases, engraved bowls; all of these were pieces, but there was not yet a synthetic overview. In this book, the vase is brilliantly and scientifically put back together.
The opaline series with Delft decors, signatures leg, Montjoye and Sargel are correctly attricuted and this book attributes, without the shadow of a doubt, vases found that were wrongly called “Clichy” vases, to Legras. On the one hand, Legras is now a person in flesh and blood, who left the Vosges where he was born, to become the Emperor of Saint-Denis. He even found his own first name again, François-Théodore, (whereas many always called him Auguste). And on the other, we see details of his prodigiously eclectic artworks in an overview, by a documented professional who has been able to step back. While reading this book, you will be transported from Art Nouveau to Art Déco. With this photographic panorama, the index and descriptive catalogue supporting it, readers will also be able to see the production of the Master of popular glass art, who travelled from Western Europe to Turkey and to the Americas, with his fragilely based Empire (it disappeared after the First World War), but whose archaeological and artistic remnants still move us, impassion us, and lead us to discu