Hi, the respond of the Museum of Glass:
Dear Micaela,
Thank you for the photographs, they were very interesting. I did not know that Jean Sala made designs for St Louis, but I am not surprised.
Jean Sala, and his father Bienvenu Sala, were well-known glassmakers in their time. They had a small studio in the Montparnasse section of Paris.
Born in Barcelona, Spain, Bienvenu (Benvenito) Sala (1859-1939) came from a family of Catalan glassmakers who claimed a Murano ancestry. Sala emigrated to France with his wife and two sons, Jean (1895-1976) and Joachim, in 1904.
Sala blew glass with the help of both his sons until Joachim’s early death in 1923. The Salas were widely known for the vases they made of a bubbly lead glass called malfin, or unrefined, which they blew in their studio in Montparnasse.
From about 1925 on, Jean Sala made his own work in addition to helping his father, and he continued to blow glass into the 1950s.
Jean Sala is best known for the vessels and animals (including fish) that he made from his characteristic bubbly glass of different colors. The colorless St Louis fish were undoubtedly a special project with the St Louis glassworks. However, Sala usually made his work in glass on his own, in his own studio; he was not affiliated with a commercial glassworks.
To see what the Museum owns by Jean Sala, search our collections browser.
http://www.cmog.org/collection/search?query=SalaI hope this information is of help to you,
Sincerely,
