The Glass and Crystal Museum

The Verrerie de Meisenthal was founded in 1704 in the northern Vosges mountains in eastern France. It produced tens of millions of pieces of utilitarian glass and cheap goblets. Between 1867 and 1894, the glassworks served as a laboratory for Emile Gallé, leader of the Ecole de Nancy, who carried out unprecedented technical and artistic research, giving Meisenthal the status of "cradle of Art Nouveau glass". The production unit survived the world wars but did not choose to modernise its production facilities and was run aground at the dawn of the 1970s. The factory, which had up to 650 employees, closed its doors on 31 December 1969, leaving in its wake a voiceless siren, a church black with smoke, a wasteland stripped of its parts by scrap merchants, and the crumbling memories of a workers' adventure that was (dis)past. With full employment, there are no social movements, no revolts. Just the harmless death of a limited company. Only in appearance. Because there, in the hollow of the mountains, the faith of men, entrepreneurs, virtuoso glassmakers and creators has never been extinguished...

After many stages of conversion of the former glassworks site, which began with the creation of the Musée du Verre de Meisenthal in 1978, the Centre International d'Art Verrier [CIAV] was created in 1992 in the former glassworks workshop, thanks to a local political will. The CIAV, a public institution, aims to preserve the technical memory of its territory, to ensure its continuity and to reintegrate traditional glass production into its time. It thus brings together the traditionally compartmentalised worlds of craft production and industry, of contemporary creation and traditional know-how, with the aim of initiating new cultural, economic and tourist dynamics around the glass professions.