Emile Gallé "Cherry Blossom" Table
Regular price
$49,500
This carved mahogany and marquetry table by Émile Gallé features a cherry blossom–shaped top, inlaid with blossoming boughs and a violin. The floral imagery draws on the Yoshino cherry, a delicate variety distinguished by its pale pink hue and single row of petals, while the table’s overall silhouette evokes the fuller form of the Kanzan cherry, known for its densely layered, richly colored blossoms. The legs are enriched with pierced carvings of ripening cherries that converge at a central finial shaped like a budding flower.
In a manner akin to Gallé’s Vases parlants, the tabletop bears an inlaid poetic inscription by Pierre Quillard: “Des sons légers de chanterelles… Et dans les bois, des voix des voix… Dans le ciel des ailes des ailes…” (“The light sounds of chanterelles… And in the woods, voices, voices… In the sky, wings, wings…”). The poem evokes an atmosphere of echoing resonance, where sound disperses gently through a woodland landscape, suggesting an ethereal, almost immaterial acoustic space.
Item #: YF-22060
Artist: Emile Gallé
Country: France
Circa: 1900
Dimensions: 31" height, 24.75" diameter.
Materials: Fruitwood
Signed: Gallé
Item #: YF-22060
Artist: Emile Gallé
Country: France
Circa: 1900
Dimensions: 31" height, 24.75" diameter.
Materials: Fruitwood
Signed: Gallé
The term chanterelle is richly layered: archaically, it denotes a songbird, yet in musical usage it refers to the highest string of a bowed instrument—the E string of the violin—associated with brilliance and aerial clarity. Quillard’s imagery thus resonates doubly, linking avian song to the luminous upper register of stringed instruments. Elsewhere in the poem, he invokes oboes and harps, extending this orchestral evocation beyond what is visually represented on the table.
Such terminology was deeply embedded in the musical culture of the period. The virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe—among the most celebrated violinists of the fin de siècle—even named his summer residence La Chanterelle, a gathering place for leading musicians of the day, where chamber music animated an environment not unlike the poetic soundscape suggested here.
The term chanterelle is richly layered: archaically, it denotes a songbird, yet in musical usage it refers to the highest string of a bowed instrument—the E string of the violin—associated with brilliance and aerial clarity. Quillard’s imagery thus resonates doubly, linking avian song to the luminous upper register of stringed instruments. Elsewhere in the poem, he invokes oboes and harps, extending this orchestral evocation beyond what is visually represented on the table.
Such terminology was deeply embedded in the musical culture of the period. The virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe—among the most celebrated violinists of the fin de siècle—even named his summer residence La Chanterelle, a gathering place for leading musicians of the day, where chamber music animated an environment not unlike the poetic soundscape suggested here.
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