The protagonists of the École de Nancy

Les frères MULLER

Bitche

Glassmakers

The Muller name is still associated today with the chandeliers, ceiling lights, lamps and glass tulips mass-produced in Croismare in the 1920s and 1930s, perpetuating the École de Nancy style after the Great War or innovating with the geometric lines of Art Deco.

Originally from the Bitche region, the Muller family moved to Meurthe-et-Moselle after the German annexation of 1870. The eldest sons had been trained as glass cutters and engravers at the Cristallerie de Saint-Louis, and were employed by Émile Gallé's glassworks from 1894.

Founded in 1897 in Croismare, near Lunéville, the glassworks produced a great deal in the style of the great Nancy glassmakers, Gallé and Daum. In 1901, when the Ecole de Nancy association was set up, Muller glassworks was one of the few artistic companies in the region not to be a member.

In 1897, the “Muller Croismare près Nancy” glassworks began production following an agreement with the “S.A. des Grandes Verreries de Croismare”. This signature clearly shows the new glassworks' desire to assert its links with the glassmakers of Nancy, despite its exclusion from the artistic group.

Charles Fridrich's Maison d'Art Lorraine and Eugène Corbin's Magasins Réunis distributed Muller glassware in Nancy, which was also available at the Magasins Réunis in Paris (rue de Turenne) and in a Paris depot on rue de Paradis, mentioned in a 1914 advertisement, just like Gallé and Daum.

From 1905 to 1908, the brothers Jean-Désiré (1877-1952) and Eugène Muller (1883-1917) were employed at Val-Saint-Lambert. The company wanted to make the most of their know-how to launch the production of ‘Daum-style’ artistic articles, a name that clearly marked the Val's desire to imitate the works of the great glassmaker from Lorraine. In three years, the brothers created more than 400 models and taught their technique, “fluogravure”, to employees at Le Val. Most of the “Daum-style” items produced by the Mullers bear the sole signature “VSL”. Nine-tenths of their production were vases, but they also made other types of articles: lights, inkwells, candy dishes, clocks, ashtrays, planters, etc.

[Translate to English:] Anonyme, Les frères Muller au travail, atelier de décoration à froid, rue Sainte-Anne à Lunéville, vers 1900 (c) Coll. part.

[Translate to English:] Anonyme, Les frères Muller au travail, atelier de décoration à froid, rue Sainte-Anne à Lunéville, vers 1900 (c) Coll. part.