Description:
Six large oval building blocks with arched face, eight full
height and three half-bricks. H. 20 cm; 9 x 13,5 cm. Light blueish Glas,
mould blown and sealed. Each marked: FALCONNIER DEP. FRANCE BELGIQUE + 8,
same marking in circular shape on seal.
Gustave Falconnier patented his much noted "briques de verre" ("glass
building blocks") in France and Belgium in 1886; further patents followed
in the USA in 1889 (complete US-Patent available on the Internet).
In 1889 Falconnier received a Medal at the Paris Exhibition. His glass
bricks were received with much interest by architects like
Hector Guimard,
Auguste Perret and
Le Corbusier. Among
the historical Art Nouveau buildings where "briques de verre" were used,
the following merit special attention:
The Mission of Algeria villa in Geneva,
built 1895 by Gaston Falconnier for the Baroness d'Outhdoomet and her husband
Eugene Colgate (now the Permanent Mission of Algeria near the United
Nations), the reception building of the champagne house Mumm
in Reims, built 1898 by Armand Bègue and Ernest Kalas,
the "Palais du Champagne" (Champagne Palace) at the Paris Exhibition of 1900
(built by the same two architects), and the Bergeret home at 24 rue Lionnais
in Nancy, built in 1905 by Lucien Weissenburger for printer Albert Bergeret;
there the bricks were used in the complex shaped roof windows as a frame for
Joseph Janin's glass windows. This listed building has housed
the president of Nancy University since 1975.
In the 1932-39 price lists of the glassworks Adlerhütten, Penzig bei
Görlitz, are "Glass bricks System Falconnier". Paulo Antonelli,
Design, collection of the Museum of Modern Art,
München...New York, German version of the original New York 2003,
S. 152 (also available online from MoMA).
These building blocks were used as filler for a window in the ruins of the
Dresdener liquor factory until the end of the 1980s. The building has
meanwhile been demolished.
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