Rare Rene Lalique Galeries Lafayette La Feuillaison Perfume Bottle – 82694 Updated 7-4-21 to delete link to Ebay listing that no longer works.

You know when you see a listing like the one at the above link; the seller usually has some knowledge on some level. After all the bottle is not signed for Rene Lalique, nothing on the bottle or label would point you to Rene Lalique, and there is no authoritative documentation of any kind that would back-up the false claim that Rene Lalique had anything to do with this bottle. Yet the seller proudly claims out of thin air* “…..made for Galeries Lafayette by Rene Lalique.” Starting off the listing title with the word “Rare” is just icing on the claim cake.

Sure enough when questioned, the seller pointed to the Utts’ groundbreaking 1990 book Lalique Perfume Bottles as the source of the information to back up the Rene Lalique claim, including a specific page number that made this an R. Lalique bottle.

Answer
“We found it on Lalique Perfume Bottles by Mary Lou and Glenn Utt page 137 and also if you google it you’ll find some people who have their own sites specializing on Lalique bottles, no one has it and or are looking for it.”

Of course the Utts’ book doesn’t say this bottle is R. Lalique. It’s a pretty good looking bottle that has value on its own, but it’s obviously not R. Lalique. The bottle in the listing is nowhere to be found in the Utts’ book. However, the actual R. Lalique Perfume Bottle for Galeries Lafayette La Feuillaison** is pictured and described on Page 24 of their book with the original label still in place.

Here’s a link to an actual R. Lalique La Feuillaison Perfume Bottle on the website that is the same as the bottle documented in the Utts’ book.

Obviously the Ebay bottle is just an unsigned*** bottle Coty supplied to the store with the perfume.**** The bottle has nothing to do with Rene Lalique. The EBay seller is stumptownusa.

Post Publication Update: At the time we posted this article, the seller had one bid at the starting price of $298. That bid was revoked. When the listing expired the seller removed the “Rare Rene Lalique” start of the title, and also removed “by Rene Lalique” from the description, and re-listed the bottle. End Of Update.

*Out of thin air from https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/out+of+thin+air “Out of nowhere; out of nothing.” And also “Auster spins stories out of thin air.” Our Note: The opposite meaning is also in use today as in “vanished into thin air”. The first known use of the phrase “into thin air” and what got the whole thin air thing started was in 1610 in the Shakespeare play The Tempest. There we hear Prosepro say: “These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve”. Our note: A true thought to keep in mind as you decide how you spend your short time in this world.

**There is a 2nd R. Lalique bottle that was used for La Feuillaison eau de toilette.

***Unsigned: We regularly advise typical collectors never to purchase any unsigned piece. Never Ever, Never Never.

****We are not Coty experts. Coty was known to supply bottles and perfume to Galeries Lafayette (and other stores) and La Feuillaison was a Coty fragrance. It was a sizable part of Coty’s business to anonymously supply complete presentations labeled for stores.

The article was published on April 17, 2020. It was updated on June 25, 2021. See the end of the article for that update.

Ecailles is the French word for scales. What could be fishy about that, right? Let’s see what happens.

Ecailles is a great looking and reasonably hard to find vase. Its claim to fame is that it’s giving Biskra and Davos Vases a run for the money in the “Worldwide R. Lalique Rare Vase Colors Competition”. Ok, there’s no real competition like that. But it makes sense they are a colorful trio because Biskra, Davos, and Ecailles were all created early in the Great Depression in the same 30-day period during the spring of 1932. Apparently Lalique picked that time period to liven up the new offerings with new colors.

Moving along, these first two photos are of a blue Ecailles Vase that sold at Rago Arts and Auction Center in Lambertville New Jersey on September 22, 2017 as Lot No. 26. What a great looking vase. It sold for $6500 all-in.

This 2nd pair of photos is of a vase that sold as an Ecailles Vase at Heritage Auctions in Dallas Texas on November 23, 2015 as Lot No. 60224. This vase sold for $11,875 all-in. Please go ahead and compare the Rago Ecailles above to the Heritage vase below. And if you decide to check further and do some research, obviously only the Rago vase above is going to match the literature and documentation for Ecailles.

Finally, this 3rd pair of photos is of an unsigned vase by an unknown maker. Let’s call this the “source of the problem vase”. It fills in all the blanks. You can imagine what a haircut might make it look like, or you can just scroll back up to the Heritage vase.

You can see a few more examples of the copy in other colors on the Copies and Close Calls page at Ecailles Copies.

Obviously the “source of the problem vase” was not originally made with the intention to deceive anyone. It’s only the later alteration of the vase, and/or the addition of a forged signature, and/or just the representation that it’s R. Lalique, that make it problematic. Whoever created this vase didn’t include some spurious signature on the underside, and they obviously did not intend to make an exact copy.

As usual, we emphasize that what the seller knew or didn’t know, did or didn’t do, thought or didn’t think, and all that kind of stuff, is not really important to you as a buyer when building your collection. The only thing is for you as a collector to be sufficiently knowledgeable and careful to avoid nightmares and get the right stuff.

And also as usual, if anyone out there in R. Lalique Land thinks we have anything wrong, please let us know by posting a comment here. We will promptly and cheerfully make any necessary corrections.

Article Update: June 25/July 5, 2021 – The listing for the Ecailles Vase vanished from the Heritage website at some point after we first published this article. That’s not really a bad thing because fakers can use that auction listing as a reference and evidence that their fake vase is real when trying to pass it off on somebody. On the other hand, having the evidence of the original listing in the proper context such as this article is important as well. So we have included a screen shot below. Also, now that you know how this fake was created, it’s worth pointing out at the bottom of the screenshot is the Condition Report’s hilarious statement of fact: … “neck has been chamfered slightly”.

Following up on the Pink Acanthes story from June, appearing on Ebay this month was a blue glass Acanthes vase look-alike that had many of the warning signs. And while questionable items appear on EBay all the time, what got our attention with this particular vase is not just that it sold for $4550 to some really lucky buyer, but that it doesn’t appear to be in the same mold as the pinko vase you’ve heard tell about. Sure they both have unfinished wrong necks. They both have the apparently low mold quality to the design. They both don’t match the literature for authentic pieces, and they both lack the great molded signature you like to see on an authentic Acanthes.

But where so many of these propositions fall flattest, is how the base is finished. In the great falling flat contest, the blue one seen here takes the prize. A right minded *** person might think that if all the other signals were missed, that all by itself the bottom of this vase should have the lucky buyer singing the blues.

Obviously opinions vary since it’s hard to imagine bidders chasing the vase up over $4000 if they didn’t believe the vase was an authentic R. Lalique vase. So take a look and judge for yourself if this looks like what you’d expect from the underside of an authentic R. Lalique Acanthes Vase or any R. Lalique Vase.

And if you don’t know enough to decide for yourself, make it a point to see and handle as much R. Lalique as you can. Get educated and get independent advice on your purchases.

Nobody wants to be a penguin, right?

One other note about the Ebay listing. The seller never said it was an R. Lalique Acanthes Vase. What the seller did do was title the listing: “R Lalique France signed numbered blue colored glass Art Deco vase”. We’ve had sellers including auction houses say with a straight face that all they meant was it was signed as stated, not that it was actually what the signature said. Two words come to mind when hearing that explanation when a seller has left their own purposefully created inference out there without contradiction: Sharp Practice ****.

Of course on Ebay in the title to your listings: “Only mention the brand name of the manufacturer that actually produced your item …” ***** Good luck with that in this instance!

And this is a good time to repeat our oft pontificated advice: It doesn’t matter what the motive or knowledge of the seller was. It only matters what you know. Maybe the seller just meant to say it was signed as stated. Your job as a collector is to know what’s right and wrong and not rely on the seller.

** Hot on the heels is a phrase that is said to have originated with hunting, capturing the reality of the living warm creature with all living things getting hotter as the pursuers get closer to the pursued. It’s almost the opposite of “the trail went cold” for the same reason. So here it’s used to say that the blue came right after the pink. In this instance the phrase “Hard on the heels of ..” would also be appropriate.

*** A right-minded person is in a good mental state… sane, rational, stuff like that.

**** A sharp practice is a crafty or deceitful dealing.

***** Here is an excerpt from the Ebay Page headed “Creating legally compliant listings” :

“Search manipulation (using unrelated brands in a listing title in order to attract people searching for those items) is another misuse of brands that isn’t allowed on eBay. Example: If you were listing an Acme TV for sale, you can’t mention other television manufacturers in your title simply to attract buyers looking for those items. This kind of search manipulation isn’t allowed on eBay. Only mention the brand name of the manufacturer that actually produced your item and don’t misrepresent your relationship with that manufacturer”

In 1949, Coty (no Francois, he was dead in 1934) introduced the fragrance Meteor. It was presented in a bottle made in its own glassworks, the Coty Glassworks. All the bottles we’ve seen, some with glass disk shaped stoppers, others with some kind of plastic or Bakelite caps or stoppers, are all signed Coty France. That makes sense; they were made by Coty in France. Duh.

Nowhere is there any R. Lalique signature on any of items in the perfume’s presentation for the obvious reasons, including the absence of Rene Lalique in 1949 owing to his death 4 years earlier.

This all brings us to the reason for this article. A regular seller of R. Lalique on Ebay, screen name georgina8648, with an Ebay store named “Lalique Originals”, has for sale as we speak, a 1949 (or later) Meteor Perfume Bottle at the following link advertised thusly (the whole reason for this article was not to work in the word “thusly”):
UPDATE 1 of 2 – August 9, 2017: The seller has changed the listing. See a link to the original listing at the end of this article. END OF UPDATE 1 of 2

That ridiculous claim of R. Laliqueism (yea, we just made that word up, and we might have made up thusly also, someone should check) is further buttressed in the item description with the following nonsense:

“The box is tatty** but reasonably intact for its 100 years.”

Maybe if the marbled plasticky (and there we go again) cap was pink, these claims would gain some credence in certain highfalutin*** circles. But the cap is not pink, so there will be no moral support from any fellow dealers, pinkos, or other really smart people.

But maybe there should be, because when you look at the photos of the bottle in the plastic base with the wonderful cap, and that great Coty France molded signature on the underside, the whole thing just screams R. Lalique, doesn’t it?

Back to planet earth, so why is there even a thin thread for a seller to try to stand on with this R. Lalique claim?

Well, for starters, in their groundbreaking 1990 book Lalique Perfume Bottles, the Utts say on Page 100 that there is a drawing by Rene Lalique of a similar bottle design for Coty for Meteor from 1914 showing a label that says “Meteor Harrods London”. No bottle has ever appeared with this label of course that we know of and we know of no evidence that any Meteor bottle was made in 1914. Not having seen this drawing ourselves, do you think it has a plastic cap and base? And for the 2nd hook, there appears in the 2014 Catalogue Raisonne a picture of a similar bottle to this 1949 Coty bottle, without a stopper and sans the plastic cap of course, and having a different neck, but with a Meteor Label. The Cat Res dates its bottle to 1911. Either way, and assuming the best case, in 1911 or 1914 Meteor was just a twinkle in the eye of Rene Lalique and the anti-semitic wind-bag Francois Coty.****

This best case would mean the 1949 Coty bottle is a somewhat close copy by Coty of an original R. Lalique design. And that is assuming there were prototypes or bottles made back in 1914 or 1911 or whenever for a fragrance that was not marketed until after 2 wars later when both Coty and Lalique were dead! Of course, the Cat Res says the 1911 bottle was not signed. Hmmmmm, this bottle is signed …. for Coty! How weird is that?

Now we’ve never had an unsigned prototype bottle in-hand, or seen one in the flesh. But of course we’ve never seen the Grateful Dead and we’re pretty sure they exist. So anything is possible. But again, so what? None of these side-show highlights can make the 1949 Coty bottle an R. Lalique bottle.

Anyway, one of our great volunteers wrote the seller with the salient facts, delivered with no rancor. Yet after a respectful waiting period the seller’s claims remain, and we figured it’s time to get on the record. But the really good news for anyone out there that thinks for a few hundred dollars you are going to get a legit R. Lalique bottle full of 100 year old perfume topped by the coolest marbled cap, is that Meteor bottles appear regularly costing only hundreds of dollars, with boxes that are not ratty/tatty, and properly advertised for what they are: Coty Bottles. But here we have an R. Lalique dealer adding a few decades and taking a few liberties. Who else would work that up? Of course this is not exactly an epiphanetic (the last made-up of word of this article) moment! Sadly, it’s more along the lines of Captain Renault’s exclamation to Rick (Humphrey Bogart) in the movie Casablanca: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”. You can click the preceding link and see the 20 second sound byte / video for yourself!

** In our deprived upbringing, and with the world having been a much bigger stranger place, and with only having our Midwest educations to rely on in those younger days (where made-up words and run-on sentences were standard), we called (and still call) worn-out or beat-up things ratty, not tatty. And what is weirdly coincidental about all that is when we typed ratty into a dictionary online (just wanting to be sure we weren’t using another made-up word), 2 of the definitions that came up were of course “shabby, untidy or in bad condition” and “resembling or characteristic of a rat: his ratty eyes glittered“. What a crazy close thought to all this. Seriously, are we the only ones here who smell a rat?*****

*** Highfalutin is a real word! It’s stuff like pretentious, affected, bombastic, and pompous.

**** Coty bought the newspaper Le Figaro in 1922 and turned it into a virulent anti-semitic rag sheet. Then in 1928 he started the newspaper L’Ami du peuple (The Friend of the People), a low priced scandal sheet in which for one very small example he railed against Jewish Bankers calling their behavior inhuman and rapacious. Coty was actually found guilty in court in 1933 for libeling Jewish war veterans groups in France.

***** “I smell a rat”, is basically the same as the phrase “something about this smells fishy”. It means you think something is wrong.

UPDATE 2 of 2 – August 9, 2017: The seller has changed the listing to remove the claim of R. Lalique from the title and also the claim of 100 years old. Here is a link to a picture of the original listing.

Original Listing

You may have to use the zoom function of your browser (or whatever program opens images for you) to get the cached image to expand in the window if it does not appear full size. After clicking on the link to the item, a new window will open with the cached image in it. On a Mac, just click on the image and see if that expands it. If not, press the apple key and click on the cached image in your browser window. On a PC, hold down the alt key while clicking on the cached image. END OF UPDATE 2 of 2