# La Main aux algues et aux coquillages > Emile Galle - 1904 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/emile-galle/galle-la-main-aux-algues-et-aux-coquillages/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-21 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Emile Galle - **Date:** 1904 - **Medium:** Crystal, partly blown and modelled hot, with inclusions and applications, wheel-engraved - **Dimensions:** Height 33.4 cm; width 13.4 cm - **Object type:** Glass - **Period:** French, Art Nouveau, Ecole de Nancy - **Current location:** Musee d'Orsay, Paris. On display, middle level, Room 63 - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A human hand, 33.4 centimetres high, modelled hot in crystal, rising out of a wave of blue-green seaweed with shells applied to its back in high relief. Emile Galle made it in 1904 and died on 23 September of that year. It was shown at Nancy five weeks later, in a case of his own design called The Depths of the Sea, at an exhibition whose opening had been put back a fortnight because he had died. The Musee d'Orsay, which has had it since 1990, calls it doubtless his last work in glass.There are four of them. Two are in the Musee de l'Ecole de Nancy under two different titles and at two different heights, one is in Paris, and a trial piece was sold at Versailles in December 1970. Anyone citing a photograph of a Galle hand is citing one of four objects, and the only reliable way to tell them apart is the measurement.The signature on this one reads Galle, engraved in relief at the base, and it has no star. From 1905 the Galle works put a star beside the name on its industrial production to mark it as made after the founder's death, and kept it there until May 1908, when the firm removed it because customers had begun saying that anything with a star was no longer Galle. That three-year mark is the cleanest authorship line in nineteenth and twentieth-century decorative art, and it is the reason a vase signed Galle can be by Galle, by his workshop in his lifetime, by his widow's factory in 1906, or by a joint-stock company in 1930. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1904** Made by Emile Galle at Nancy `[documented]` (origin) Dated 1904 by the Musee d'Orsay and signed at the base in relief, Galle, without a star. Galle died on 23 September 1904, so the object was completed within the last months of his life. Three further examples of the model exist. - **1904** Exhibited at Nancy, in the maker's own display case `[documented]` (exhibition) Shown at the Exposition d'art decoratif lorrain, galeries Poirel, Nancy, organised by the Societe lorraine des Amis des Arts, in a vitrine designed by Galle and titled Les Fonds de la mer, catalogued as number 88 and reproduced as plate 34. The opening was postponed from 15 to 29 October 1904 because of Galle's death. This is an exhibition, not a change of ownership, and is recorded here because it is the object's first appearance in the public record. - **1904-1990** The Galle family, by descent; Jean Bourgogne, the maker's grandson `[documented]` (descent) Kept in the family from the 1904 exhibition until the gift, but the sequence of holders inside the family is not recorded. The only named holder is the donor, Jean Bourgogne, Galle's grandson and an entomologist of international standing, born 14 February 1903 and died 10 March 1999. He was one year old when the object was made and cannot have been its first owner. When the object was lent to the Galle exhibition at the Musee du Luxembourg in 1985 and 1986 the catalogue described the lender only as a private collection. The 1990 donation was initially recorded as anonymous and was afterwards attributed to Galle's descendants. - **1990-present** Musee d'Orsay, Paris `[documented]` (gift) Gift, 1990. The museum's record gives the acquisition committee of 15 March 1990, the council of 21 March 1990 and a decree of 10 April 1990, and states that the work was attributed to the Musee d'Orsay in 1990. Inventory OAO 1207. It was shown almost immediately in the museum's survey of seven years of acquisitions, De Manet a Matisse, in the winter of 1990 to 1991, and has been in near-continuous exhibition use since. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - The object described in this record has never been sold at auction. It passed from the maker to his family and from his family to the Musee d'Orsay as a gift, and no price has ever been attached to it. The results listed below are for OTHER objects: one of the three other examples of the same model, and two Galle works quoted here as market comparanda. None of them is a valuation of this object. - **1970-12-13** Me Georges Blache, commissaire-priseur, Hotel Rameau, Versailles, Ensemble exceptionnel Art nouveau, tableaux de l'epoque 1900, volumes et reliures, vases en pate de verre, ceramiques, porcelaines, bronzes, bijoux, argenterie, mobilier, tapis, vitraux, lot 67 - Estimate: Not published in the sources consulted. - Hammer: FRF 20,000. The French account uses adjugee, which is specifically the knock-down, so this is a hammer price. - With premium: Not published in the sources consulted. - NOT THIS OBJECT. A fourth example of the model, sold at Versailles on 13 December 1970 and reproduced in colour on the cover of the sale catalogue and at plate XI. It is the only one of the four hands ever offered at public auction and it has not been located since. The 1985 Galle catalogue misprints the date as 13 December 1960. The sale is described in the literature as a historic one, among the first at which Art Nouveau prices caught fire. A footnote in the French account converts the figure to roughly 25,046 euros of 2023 purchasing power using the INSEE franc-to-euro converter; that is one method among several and is quoted as the source's own, not adopted here. Note also that Thiebaut regards this hand as a failed trial rather than a finished work. - **2015-05-21** Sotheby's, Paris, Bleu fleur d'eau, marqueterie de verre vase with an iris, 1901-1904 - Estimate: EUR 200,000 to 300,000 - Hammer: Not published. Only the premium-inclusive figure has been reported. - With premium: EUR 435,000, reported as including fees. - NOT THIS OBJECT. A different Galle, quoted as the market comparandum at the top of the maker's range. 32 cm on a gilt bronze base, worked over entirely with the wheel; three examples of the model are documented, one exhibited at Dresden in 1901 and one at the Ecole de Nancy show in Paris in 1903. The provenance was acquisition directly from Emile Galle in 1904 and descent in the same family, which is as strong as a Galle provenance gets and is part of what the price is paying for. - **1989** Sotheby's, Les Coprins, table lamp - Estimate: Not published in the sources consulted. - Hammer: Not published. - With premium: USD 1.1 m approximately, as reported, UNLABELLED. - NOT THIS OBJECT. Reported as the standing auction record for Emile Galle. One of six examples made in 1902, in iridescent blown glass in the form of a group of mushrooms, on a wrought-iron base, 80 cm high. The exact date within 1989 and the hammer-against-premium split are missing from the sources consulted, and the figure is carried here only because it is the ceiling against which every other Galle price is read. Note that even the record object is one of six: unique works do not exist in this output. - **2020-06-25** Sotheby's, Paris, Important Design - Estimate: EUR 2,000 to 4,000 - Hammer: Not obtained, and the reason is now verified rather than asserted. See note. - With premium: NOT OBTAINED. The lot page renders in full to a plain fetch and displays 'Auction Closed' with the estimate, but in place of a result it displays 'Log in to view results'. This desk does not create accounts and does not log in, so the figure stops here. The estimate above is an expectation and is not a price realised. - LOCATION CORRECTED, LONDON TO PARIS. The lot page's own machine-readable location field returns Paris and its currency field returns EUR. The conditions of business printed on the same page are the Paris ones throughout: settlement to the seller in euros, banking to HSBC Paris St Augustin at 3 rue La Boetie, collection at 6 rue de Duras 75008 Paris, jurisdiction of the Cour d'Appel de Paris, the French droit de suite with its 12,500 euro cap, and a sale timezone of Europe/Paris. The page also states in terms that estimates are in euros. None of that is compatible with a King Street or New Bond Street sale. THE LOGIN WALL IS NOW MEASURED, NOT ASSUMED. The record said the result was 'behind a login on the auction house's site and this record has not retrieved it', which is the exact shape of claim this desk is told never to write from a fetch it did not complete. The fetch was completed today at rung 1, with a desktop browser User-Agent and no browser needed: HTTP 200, 419,894 bytes, the full lot rendered, the estimate present as '2,000 - 4,000 EUR', the state as 'Auction Closed' timed 'June 25, 03:52 PM GMT', and the result replaced by the literal string 'Log in to view results'. The claim was true and is now evidenced. NO FIGURE IS DERIVED AND NONE SHOULD BE. An unrealised low estimate must never be read as a price, and this row exists on the record precisely to keep it from being. WHAT THIS ROW IS: not this object. A different Galle, an enamelled and gilt glass vase of about 1900, 19 cm, from a private collection in the United Kingdom, carried on the record only to show the bottom of the maker's range. The consignor being British while the sale was French is unremarkable and is not evidence for the London error. ## Exhibitions - Exposition d'art decoratif lorrain, in the vitrine Les Fonds de la mer, no. 88, plate 34, Galeries Poirel, Nancy, 1904 - Galle, catalogue no. 148, Musee du Luxembourg, Paris, 1985-1986 - De Manet a Matisse: sept ans d'enrichissement au Musee d'Orsay, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, 1990-1991 - 1900, catalogue no. 298, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 2000 - La Main aux algues et aux coquillages: le testament artistique d'Emile Galle, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, 2004 - Emile Galle: commemoration d'un centenaire, Edo-Tokyo Museum, Tokyo, and National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2005 - Sade: attaquer le soleil, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, 2014-2015 - Les origines du monde: l'invention de la nature au XIXe siecle, catalogue no. 204, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, 2021 - Bleu profond: les artistes et l'invention des fonds marins, Les Franciscaines, Deauville, 2025 ## Literature - Exposition d'art decoratif lorrain, exhibition catalogue, Nancy, galeries Poirel, 1904, plate 34. - Emile Galle, Le Decor symbolique: discours de reception a l'Academie de Stanislas a Nancy, le 17 mai 1900, Nancy, Berger-Levrault, 1900. - Philippe Garner, Galle, Paris, Flammarion, 1977, p. 121. - Georges Barbier-Ludwig, 'La Main aux algues et aux coquillages, a propos du symbolisme d'Emile Galle', Arts nouveaux, bulletin de l'Association des Amis du musee de l'Ecole de Nancy, no. 6, 1991. - Francois Le Tacon, Emile Galle ou le Mariage de l'Art et de la Science, Paris, Editions Messene, 1995, pp. 136-142. - Philippe Thiebaut, 'Le testament d'un verrier: La Main aux algues et aux coquillages (1904) d'Emile Galle', La Revue du Louvre et des musees de France, no. 3, 1996, pp. 71-80. - Philippe Thiebaut, Galle, le testament artistique, exhibition catalogue, Musee d'Orsay, 15 June to 12 September 2004, Paris, Hazan and Musee d'Orsay, 2004, no. 1. - Guy Cogeval (ed.), Le Musee d'Orsay a 360 degres, Paris, Skira, Flammarion and Musee d'Orsay, 2013, p. 293, text by Philippe Thiebaut. - Samuel Provost, 'La signature Galle a l'etoile: une revision chronologique et une estimation quantitative', Journal of Glass Studies, 2017. The volume number given in the author's own online bibliography, 39, appears to be an error; the article is dated 2017. - Servane Dargnies-de-Vitry (ed.), 100 oeuvres qui racontent le climat, Paris, GrandPalaisRMN, 2025, illustration no. 85. ## Open questions - Which of the four hands is the one exhibited at Nancy in 1904 and reproduced as plate 34 of that catalogue? The Orsay example descends from the family and is the obvious candidate, but no source consulted matches the plate to an inventory number. - Where is the fourth example, the trial piece sold at Versailles on 13 December 1970 as lot 67? It has not been located since. - Are the two La Main aux algues first versions of the two with shells? Francois Le Tacon says they are; Philippe Thiebaut rejects it as reading a false linearity into Galle's development. Both positions are in print and neither has been tested against the objects. - What was the hammer price of the Bleu fleur d'eau vase at Sotheby's Paris in 2015? Only the premium-inclusive 435,000 euros is published. - On what date in 1989 did Sotheby's sell the Les Coprins lamp, and what was the hammer against the premium? The house is established; the rest is not. - How many star-marked pieces were produced between 1905 and 1908? Provost's article on the star carries a quantitative estimate that this record has not been able to read; the paper was not obtained. - Is the family tradition that the hand protests the sinking of the Russian squadron at Port Arthur documented anywhere beyond family testimony reported by the museum? - Has the object ever been technically examined or conserved? No condition report or conservation history has been published in the sources consulted. - Should the museums holding star-marked pieces revise their date ranges to 1905 to 1908? The Rijksmuseum's about 1904 to about 1906 is the superseded Dezavelle chronology, and it is not alone. - Is this object (OAO 1207) among the loans to L'Etrange cas de M. Galle, Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nancy / Musee de l'Ecole de Nancy, 21 October 2026 to 27 February 2027? Press coverage describes the exhibition as supported by the Musee d'Orsay and drawing on public collections, but no checklist has been located. ## Sources - [1] Musee d'Orsay, collection record for Emile Galle, La Main aux algues et aux coquillages, 1904, inventory OAO 1207, with the technique line, dimensions, inscription, designation, acquisition history, exhibition list, bibliography and indexing terms, and the museum's own commentary. The URL returns HTTP 403 to automated retrieval; the record, including its collapsed panels, was read in full in the in-app browser on 4 August 2026. Record last modified 2 July 2026. - [2] French Wikipedia, 'La Main aux algues et aux coquillages'. TERTIARY. Used for the four known examples with their inventory numbers, dimensions and acquisition dates, the postponement of the 1904 Nancy opening from 15 to 29 October, the identification of Jean Bourgogne as the family owner, the Versailles sale of 13 December 1970, the Ophelia reading, and the assembled bibliography. Flagged for replacement with Thiebaut 1996 and the 2004 Orsay catalogue. - [3] Samuel Provost, 'The Galle signatures on glass after 1904: a tentative chronology, part I, 1904-1920', 28 December 2020. PRIMARY for the revised dating of the star: the decision taken no earlier than January 1905, introduction in the first half of 1905, withdrawal in May 1908, the evidence of Henriette Galle's letters to Albert Daigueperce, the quotation from the director Emile Lang, and the supersession of Rene Dezavelle's 1974 testimony. - [4] Samuel Provost, 'The Galle signatures on glass after 1904: a tentative chronology, part II, 1920-1936'. Used for the marks from 1920 to 1936, the associated company reorganisations and designers, the 1931 furnace closure against the 1936 end of production established by Francois Le Tacon in 1993, and the near-total absence of evidence for about 1928 to 1936. - [5] Wikimedia Commons file record for the Rijksmuseum vase with maple branches, BK-1983-35, carrying the museum's own catalogue text: workshop of Emile Galle, about 1904 to about 1906, 29.5 cm, and the signature Galle with a star. - [6] Wikimedia Commons file record for the Rijksmuseum vase with honesty seed-pods, BK-1972-74, carrying the museum's catalogue text: workshop of Emile Galle, about 1906 to about 1914, 8.8 cm, and the signature Galle. - [7] Art Without Skin, 'Un vase exceptionnel d'Emile Galle mis en vente chez Sotheby's (Paris)', 27 April 2015, on the Bleu fleur d'eau marqueterie de verre vase: the 1901-1904 dating, the 32 cm height, the estimate of 200,000 to 300,000 euros, the result of 435,000 euros including fees at Sotheby's Paris on 21 May 2015, the acquisition directly from Galle in 1904 and family descent, the three documented examples with their Dresden 1901 and Paris 1903 exhibitions, and the standing record of about 1.1 million dollars for the Les Coprins lamp in 1989. - [8] Wikimedia Commons file record for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Autumn Crocus vase, accession 1984.553, about 1900, carrying the museum's own metadata giving the maker as the studio of Emile Galle and as Etablissements Galle, with the gift of Lloyd and Barbara Macklowe, 1984. - [9] Samuel Provost, 'Fake Galles I: when a floral design...', April 2023. Used for the two categories of fake, the Romanian and Chinese copies, the rebaptism of glass by Paul Nicolas, De Vez and Burgun and Schverer, the alteration of authentic pieces, and the diagnostic signals including the intaglio against cameo signature. - [10] Philip Chasen, 'More information on how to spot reproduction Galle vases', Philip Chasen Antiques, 25 November 2010. TRADE SOURCE. Used for the wheel-polished semi-gloss decoration against a matte ground, the dark band and straight-cut rim, the over-large bulbous foot, the accent on the final e, and the appraiser's own figure that about half of the Galle pieces he appraises turn out to be fake. - [11] Sotheby's, Important Design, 25 June 2020, lot record for an Emile Galle enamelled and gilt glass vase, circa 1900, 19 cm, signed EG with the Croix de Lorraine and Emile Galle Nancy on the underside, estimate 2,000 to 4,000 euros, from a private collection in the United Kingdom. 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