Designer de Luxe

"Birds hiding amidst twisted foliage, snakes coiled around trunks of trees . . . fern-crooks . . . feathers . . . scarabs . . . naiads swimming . . . knights in full armor. ..."

This was Lalique glass--the expensive, ubiquitous, famed bric-a-brac of the 19203. The flashiest examples brought from $3,000 to $12,000. Two factories in France, equipped with every modern mechanical device, fed Lalique glass to an eager world. A sleek shop on Paris' rue Royale was a mecca to droves of cashheavy U.S. tourists (a U.S. businessman once hurried to the shop in search of an idea for a catsup bottle).

Exactly how the glass was decorated with its stylized forms was a hard-won secret which involved molds, core-casting, polishing, cutting, sanding. But the results were more than satisfactory to the public: Lalique's staggering assortment of zoological, botanical and nautical forms once decorated everything from candelabra to radiator caps. Lalique glass was a gift-shopkeeper's idea of what the world should look like.

Last week 85-year-old Rene Lalique, a small, rheumatism-ridden man who looked a little like Lloyd George, died in Paris. He had been one of the most energetic artisan-manufacturers of his time.

Lalique began as a designer of jewelry. When he first branched off into glass, he worked in his tiny Paris flat. Finally freelancing as a specialist in glass, he acquired his own factories (which closed during the German occupation) and sold as much as he could make.

Rene Lalique's highly specialized talent brought him exaggerated fame on two continents. Even the highroad between Fifth Avenue and the rue de la Paix was Lalique-paved, in part: his most triumphant commission was the decoration of the S.S. Normandie's main dining room.

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