Daum
Biography
By 1904 the Daum crystal studio, under the guidance of its eponymous brothers, Auguste and Antonin, had become perhaps the major name in Art Nouveau glassware. After its gold medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1900, the studio carved out a new path for decorative glass. A single piece might see a combination of Jacques Gruber's acid etchings, enamelling, and engraving, or handles and ornamental motifs. Perhaps its most important technical innovation was the reintroduction of what became called pâte de verre ('glass paste') in 1906. In this ancient Egyptian method of casting, glass is crushed into a paste which is then packed into a refractory mould before its elements are fused in a kiln. To this day, Daum remains the only commercial crystal manufacturer to employ this technique