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Henri Edmond Cross was a sculptor of the mid-19th century Neo-Gothic school. He drew inspiration from ancient Egyptian amulets unearthed from the ground, hoping to find a medium that could convey aesthetics as in the past, where color could be rendered not only on the surface but also directly integrated into the interior of the work. He experimented with various materials, initially using wax and fusing it with enamels, but wax is ephemeral and lacks lasting vitality. He sought a more permanent material, which led him to glass. He became a pioneer in the modern revival of the lost-wax casting technique. The French 19th-century Romantic writer Alexandre Dumas was Cross's first and most important patron, having strongly supported the development and research of colored wax techniques since 1869. He once commissioned Cross to sculpt a statue of his beloved daughter, Jeanne.
After Cross laid the foundation for the lost-wax casting technique, his followers improved upon the basic process. Among them, Amalic Walter became the artist who most closely approached Cross's ideal—developing a material that was translucent and capable of mixing multiple colors. He used techniques such as binding, adhering, and pressing to fuse glass blocks, allowing his works to take shape in three-dimensional forms rather than as thin, flat planes.
Walter came from a family of craftsmen in Sèvres; his grandfather and father both served as painters of ceramic enamels at the School of Ceramics. He underwent a long and rigorous curriculum at school, which laid a very solid foundation for his grasp of color. Lost-wax casting, of course, did not appear on the school's curriculum, but Walter lived in an era influenced by glass art masters like Gallé and pioneers of the lost-wax casting technique like Cross, where glass art was continually expanding into new realms. Particularly, Henri Edmond Cross and his son, Jean Cross, made lost-wax casting a trend of the time. Walter became familiar with and mastered the lost-wax casting technique in Sèvres. At that time, as an apprentice to an artist, he had the opportunity to conduct various experiments, his works began to win awards, and they were exhibited in national museums.