Umbrella Stand ‘Aux Grenouilles’ by Émile Gallé

French Art Nouveau marquetry “Aux Grenouilles” umbrella stand, by Emile Gallé. This stand for umbrellas and walking sticks incorporates frog (Grenouille) handles and feet in cast bronze, a decorative fillip that provides an otherwise utilitarian piece of furniture with a novel and charming appeal. The cabinet’s feet are syntheses of the legs of a pickerel frog and the feet of a lion. While Galle’s artistic antecedents created chimeric creatures of their own, their fabrication was more of a fantasy than a representation of reality. By the turn of the century, the rapidly developing field of microbiology had rendered the creation of chimeras a foreseeable event.