Alphonse-Georges Reyen.

ALPHONSE-GOERGES REYEN, (France, 1844 - 1910).
Glass vase with bluish fused colors.
Signed on the base.
Measurements: 24 (height) x 13 (diameter) cm.

Born in France, in full expansion of the taste for the applied arts, Reyen grew up fascinated by light. Where others saw a simple reflection, he perceived a universe of nuances. From a young age he was attracted to the craft of the verrier-graveurs, the master glass engravers who, with fire and acid, drew on glass as if it were a transparent canvas.

Reyen began his apprenticeship in the workshops of Eugène Rousseau, one of the great innovators of artistic glass. Rousseau, impressed by the sensitivity of his pupil, went so far as to say that he owed part of his own success to him. Under his tutelage, the young Alphonse discovered Japonisme, that European fascination with Japanese art and nature that would mark the aesthetics of the century. Later, he perfected his knowledge with Émile Gallé, with whom he learned the most refined techniques of acid etching and wheel engraving.

From those formative years would emerge a personal style, difficult to imitate. Reyen did not see glass as a rigid material, but as a living substance: a kind of solidified water where light could dwell. His workshop, installed in Paris around 1890, became a small laboratory where chemistry, fire and imagination were united in a single creative gesture.

It was then that his vases were born, the pieces that today immortalize his name.
Reyen created his works from multilayered glass, superimposing molten colors that he then etched with acid and polished to the wheel. In these hidden layers lay his secret: by removing the material with precision, he exposed the inner colors, revealing flowers, fish or dragonflies that seemed to move within the glass itself.Each piece bore his discreet signature-A.-G. Reyen, but his true authorship was recognized by the elegance of the line and the perfect balance between form and light.

His art is at the heart of Art Nouveau, a movement that sought to reconcile art with everyday life and made glass one of its most refined languages. While others worked in metal or ceramics, Reyen preferred the challenge of glass, a material that requires patience, precision and a deep understanding of light.

Although he did not achieve the public fame of Gallé or Lalique, Reyen was an artist's artist: respected, admired and cited as a reference in Parisian circles of the time. His studio on the boulevard de Solférino was known for the serenity with which he worked and for the obsessive attention he devoted to every detail.