Читать книгу Émile Gallé - Émile Gallé - Страница 4

The constant need to create something new makes us sometimes forget the rules of taste and aesthetics. Have we not witnessed before, people raving about this nonsense: a green rose! A green rose is not a rose, it is a Brussels sprout.

This desire to innovate, based on commercial requirements, would eventually cause the undoing of nature’s charm, replacing grace with stiffness. Out of this flower called violet, we make a wallflower and we rejoice.

Thus we can see one of our excellent and distinguished colleagues in the horticultural press write the following odd lines, about the bearing of one of the most graceful plants: “If I have one criticism to make about the genus Fuchsia, it would be about the pendulous, ‘tear-drop’ shape of the flowers, which means that we can see them only from underneath, making them unsuitable for bouquets.” Hence, he advocates an old form Fuchsia erecta of which he gives a sample. “Look at these massive rods, swollen, abnormal, these stiff stems, called ‘made of iron’, then you will get a sense of what, sometimes, disturbed by intensive farming, nature had done so well to be seen from the bottom up.” The florist Garo “can obtain something ugly with one of the most beautiful, the most dainty floral arrangements, these tiny threaded bells, these coral and garnet pendants, these ‘earrings’ as pointed out by our good friend Carrière.” Little did he know just how right he was when the famous Parisian jeweller, Lucien Falize, created those earrings one day, with rubies and diamonds, the most exquisite ornaments, for the ears of a princess of the Arabian Nights.

The horticultural selector needs a natural taste originating from a sincere admiration, to be passionate of natural masterpieces. His role is not to alter, to distort in a counter-aesthetic way to unbalance ungracefully the natural characteristics of a genre, but to exalt only those that are decorative, stylish, and to bring them to their supreme beauty. The sower of fruit who would make the other earring, this delightful gem, out of a cherry, from the branch to the lips, an artificial fruit, set up on a tight wire, would it not deserve to be hanged on its tree?

Fortunately, the public is resistant to certain innovations. See how happily they discovered again in the exhibitions, among the collections, natural and simple shapes. Also, the Fuchsia erecta does not scare us. For a long time it will not take down the nice ‘earrings’ that embellish our windows and balconies.