Lalique’s 2011 collection celebrates Yves Klein’s take on the “Winged Victory of Samothrace” with a life-sized reproduction of the famous statue. Photos: ©Lalique SA

THE FIRST THING YOU SEE INSIDE THE NEW LALIQUE MUSEUM in Wingen-sur-Moder is crystal—almost two tons of it—hanging from the ceiling. Those intrepid enough to walk under this nearly 10-foot chandelier might want to note that a weight-bearing pillar had to come down to make room for it. René Lalique’s son, Marc, created it for an exhibition in 1951, but it had been gathering dust in the basement of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Paris ever since. Now meticulously restored, it has found a home back in the Alsatian village where it was made.

    Several other Lalique museums exist around the world, from Tokyo to Lisbon, but this is the only one in France. Inaugurated July 1, it is located just a few miles from where René Lalique set up his glassmaking factory, still in operation 90 years later.

    “The museum shows the breadth of Lalique’s creations from jewelry to crystal,” says curator Véronique Brumm, who claims distant glassmaking relatives in this same town. Taking in the glittering displays, it’s surprising to learn that when the region of Alsace and the local municipalities started planning the museum in the early 1990s, they had no collection whatsoever. The original idea, explains Brumm, was simply to show images and films about René Lalique and his company; only gradually did the project evolve into a “real” museum. The transformation started in 2002 with the opportunity to buy an Art Nouveau Lalique pendant of a dragonfly woman at auction. Subsequently, the Lalique company (which is not a partner in the project but offers support) donated 40 contemporary works to the nascent museum.

    The turning point came when René Lalique’s granddaughter Marie-Claude passed away in 2003. Her belongings were dispersed, and the museum acquired several important drawings and objects, such as a 1919 clear glass vase with two large frosted glass rings (like ear hoops) covered in scarabs. In 2007, the institution received the coveted Musée de France designation, which made it eligible for substantial state subsidies and loans from other national museums, including the Musée des Arts et Métiers and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Now there are nearly 600 objects on display.

    The museum inhabits the site of the Hochberg glass workshop, founded in the 18th century but closed in 1868, when the nearby forest could no longer supply enough wood for the furnaces. Listed as a historic monument, this group of sandstone houses with peaked terracotta roofs stands amid a gently rolling setting of fields and trees. To the south, long-haired Scottish Highland cattle graze on a hillock, their large hooves perfectly suited to the marshy land.

    One of France’s finest architects, Jean-Michel Wilmotte, was selected to renovate the workshop and create an extension. His plan caught the jury’s eye not for its architectural bravado but for the way it blended into the existing buildings and landscape. “This is a little hamlet with a lot of charm,” he says. “I thought it was best to respect it.” So he placed his addition behind the original structure, semi-buried in a sloping piece of ground. Visitors approaching the main entrance don’t even see the extension at first—the only telltale sign is a sheet of glass indicating the front door. But as they draw near, a cube of green Italian stone on a concrete base suddenly appears beyond and to the left. From different angles, one perceives it as a box, a low wall or a street-level garden (which also happens to be the roof). The entire structure is an ongoing game of hide-and-seek between nature and architecture, old and new. Wilmotte chose green stone for the façade and green-tinted glass for the windows so that it would practically disappear into the vegetation. “We made a wound in the earth, but when nature takes over again, you won’t even see we’ve built a museum.”

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