Art Deco Floor Lamp Paul Kiss And Daum Nancy

For collectors, Daum is a name in the first rank of the French makers of art glass, along with those of Émile Gallé and René Lalique. Led in its early decades by the brothers Auguste (1853–1909) and Antonin Daum (1864–1931), the company, based in the city of Nancy, established its reputation in the Art Nouveau period, and later successfully adopted the Art Deco style.

In 1878, lawyer Jean Daum took over the ownership of a glassworks as payment for a debt and installed his sons as proprietors. Initially, Daum made glass for everyday purposes such as windows, watches and tableware, but the success that Gallé enjoyed at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris — the international showcase for which the Eiffel Tower was built — inspired the Daum brothers to begin making art-glass pieces. They produced popular works of cameo glass, a decorative technique in which an outer layer of glass is acid-etched or carved off to reveal the layer below, but Daum became best known for vessels and sculptures in pâte de verre — a painstaking method in which finely ground colored glass is mixed with a binder, placed in a mold and then fired in a kiln. 

Though early Daum glass was never signed by individual artists, the firm employed some of the masters of the naturalistic, asymmetrical Art Nouveau style, including Jacques Grüber, Henri Bergé and Amalric Walter (whose first name is frequently misspelled). Daum also collaborated with furniture and metalware designer Louis Majorelle, who created wrought-iron and brass mounts for vases and table lamps. In the 1960s, Daum commissioned fine artists, most notably Salvador Dalí and sculptor César Baldaccini, to design glass pieces. As you see from the works offered on 1stDibs, Daum has been home to an astonishingly rich roster of creative spirits and is today a state-owned enterprise making pâte de verre figurines. 

Paul Kiss helped elevate metalwork to an art form in the 1920s and 1930s, creating beautiful Art Deco-inspired furniture like table lamps and wall mirrors with exquisite ornate details. The pieces often featured geometric designs, plant motifs and human and animal figures.

Kiss was born in Hungary in 1885, but he settled in Paris in 1907. There, he worked under Raymond Subes and Edgar Brandt, two of the most celebrated metalworkers of the day. After World War I, Kiss opened his own studio and showroom on the city’s rue Léon-Delhomme. Kiss designed and produced numerous pieces of iron furniture throughout the 1920s and 1930s. He was commissioned to restore historic monuments and make new public monuments as well. Among his clients were the kings of Siam and Egypt.

Kiss produced the metalwork for the Monuments aux Morts war memorial in Levallois-Perret, France, for which he received the silver medal at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1924. In 1925, he exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs and the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes.

In the 1920s, Kiss was a mentor to the skilled young designer Paul Fehér. Fehér later moved to the United States, where he became a distinguished designer for Rose Iron Works, continuing the tradition handed down to him by Kiss.

On 1stDibs, find vintage Paul Kiss lighting, mirrors, serveware and more.