Heaven scent

The finest and most comprehensive collection of perfume bottles and accessories made by three generations of Lalique family designers will be offered at auction by Sotheby’s as part of their Twentieth Century Works of Art sale in New York on December 4, 1998. American collectors, Glenn and Mary Lou Utt, began collecting Lalique while living in Paris in the late 1950s. Scouring flea markets and auctions, they ultimately assembled more than 300 exquisite examples representing the history of the company’s fragrance designs from René Lalique’s first commercial bottle in 1908 to modern examples produced for the in-house fragrance Lalique.

The Utt Collection has an international reputation having been widely exhibited in Europe and America and published in the Utt’s 1989 standard work Lalique Perfume Bottles. Estimates range from $1,000-$25,000 with the majority expected to bring less than $3,000 each.

The commercial fragrance industry began in France at the turn of the century when Francois Spoturno, a young Corsican industrialist, developed a range of synthetic-based fragrances and the technology to produce them in large quantities. He traded as ‘Coty’ and believed that his products should be as appealing "to the eye as much as the nose". Previously, perfume had been sold in pharmaceutical bottles but in 1908, Coty commissioned René Lalique to design labels and bottles for his new range of fragrances. At the time Lalique was the world’s undisputed master jeweler but he had never made glass vessels commercially.

Within a year of the first approach by Coty, Lalique had taken over a small glass works near Fontainbleau and began to produce perfume bottles, powder boxes and dressing table accessories. Between the opening of his first glassworks to his death in 1945, René Lalique designed more than 250 perfume bottles. About a third were made for Lalique and the rest were commissioned by perfumers, fashion houses and retailers including Coty rivals Roger et Gallet and Houbigant. The earliest piece in the collection is an example of the first perfume bottle designed for Coty’s fragrance L’Effleurt, which loosely translates as ‘loving embrace’. The design was originally created by Lalique as a label and shows a symbolistic female figure.

Lalique’s chief innovation was the use of the vacuum system to suck, rather than to blow, molten glass into molds. This technique which created a sharper image was used to great success in this first example. The L’Effleurt bottle is estimated at $3,500-5,000. Another progressive patented technique, first used by Lalique in jewelry design, involved setting a piece of metal foil between two pieces of glass. Quatre Soleils, a bottle inset with four floral roundels set over gold foil, glows like four suns when set in the light and is estimated at $4,000-6,000.

The United States presented perfumers with an enormous commercial opportunity and Coty entered the U.S. market in 1913 by opening a three-floor luxury showroom at 712 Fifth Avenue in New York. Lalique designed the furnishings, cabinets and the window panels, which can still be admired.

Many of the Lalique bottles still have their original contents and packaging. Themed bottles include a flacon designed to imitate the outline of the Chrysler Building in black and silver with its original case (estimate: $6,000-8,000), a green opalescent glass bottle modeled to resemble a Chinese snuff bottle for Roger & Gallet’s Le Jade perfume (estimate: $3,000-5,000) and a thin green glass bottle, the stopper molded with graduated concentric rings with its original green wood and chrome box for Worth’s Sans Adieu (estimate: $1,500-2,000). A rare 1912 bottle entitled Lézards, molded with two entwined lizards in a charcoal gray color, is estimated at $15/25,000. The collection also includes Lalique-designed powder boxes, miniature perfume bottles and other co-ordinating accessories.

About The Author:

April Tom is a successful author and regular contributor to http://www.1st-in-cosmetics.com. Tips on skin care, hair care and beauty products to bring out natural beauty.