Daum France Perfume Bottle

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. 

Over time, many different styles of vintage, new and antique bottles have found second lives as coveted decorative objects in pristine display cases all over the world. Originally, these bottles may have been decanters and flasks for spirits and liqueurs, medicine and perfume bottles or functional vases for fresh floral arrangements.

We know that glass can be a radical art form. So your vintage art glass or Art Deco pieces will stand on their own to be admired by all alongside your other treasured collectibles in your living room or dining room. But maybe you’re thinking about decorating elsewhere in your home with the other types of glass bottles that you’ve picked up over the years.

There are many corners of your space that can be brightened by an arrangement of bottles of various sizes, shapes and colors. Spruce up your kitchen, bedroom, craft room or art studio by lining the window sill with an array of glass bottles. In this case, you’ll want to use glass bottles instead of ceramic or metal, as transparent material in the sunlight — particularly colored bottles — will introduce energy and pops of color to adjacent walls and surfaces.

Grouping short, tall, thin and wide bottles — some with flowers, some without — on a tabletop, buffet or desk in your home office can bring a much-needed dynamic as a centerpiece or merely dress up a workspace.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of vintage, new and antique glass bottles that includes mid-century modern bottles, Murano glass and more.