Highly popular in the 1880s for realistically reproducing historicist, oriental, and Japonist patterns, enamel decoration on glass became popular again in France from the 1910s onwards, to adorn glassware with simple and stylized designs.
After visiting the Viard glassworks in Bar-sur-Seine in 1911, the painter associated with the Fauvist movement, Maurice Marinot, became the first artist in France to renew enamel decoration on glass by simplifying the designs.
He was soon followed in this activity by other decorative artists such as Marcel Goupy and Jean Luce, who applied the new style of painted designs featuring stylized plants to the creation of tableware sets. Within the Rouard gallery, where he practiced his work, Goupy also created numerous glass art objects with enamel depicting scenes of people and landscapes. Other glassmakers, such as Charles Schneider and Gabriel Argy-Rousseau, also engaged in this practice for a time before devoting themselves to other glassmaking techniques.
Among the decorative artists of the 1920s is also Auguste Heiligenstein. After beginning his apprenticeship at the Legras glassworks, working at the Baccarat crystal factory, and collaborating with Marcel Goupy at the decoration workshop of the Rouard gallery, he developed a personal style of enamelled glass with gold or decorated with translucent enamels outlined in gold, which would make him famous.
Finally, in a very different register, influenced by the artistic movement of Expressionism, Marcelle Whal paints figurative scenes or abstract decorations, applying enamel to glassware in a powerful and spontaneous manner.