René Lalique designed and manufactured a refined box for Coty’s solid brilliantine, a popular grooming product of the early 20th century. Brilliantine was a lightly scented hair dressing used by both men and women to give the hair shine, smoothness, and light control. Unlike heavier pomades, brilliantine imparted gloss and manageability without stiffness, making it ideal for sleek, fashionable hairstyles of the Belle Époque and the Art Deco eras. Coty’s brillantine cristallisée was a solid, crystallized form of the product, packaged luxuriously to appeal to modern consumers who expected not only functionality but beauty in everyday toiletries.
Lalique’s box was crafted in pressed, molded colorless glass, cylindrical in section and shaped like a small drum—compact, tactile, and visually harmonious with Coty’s emerging aesthetic language. The frosted glass lid is its most striking feature: a delicately sculpted raised clematis corolla spreads across the surface in molded relief, catching light in its satin finish. Along the edge of the lid, “COTY PARIS” is molded in relief, integrating branding directly into the decorative design. The motif is often referred to by the French term “Clématite,” meaning clematis, a flowering vine belonging to the buttercup family whose distinctive petals inspired Lalique’s stylized floral geometry.
The glass base of original Lalique-made boxes feature the molded signature “LALIQUE DÉPOSÉ.” The box measures 6.5 cm wide by 3 cm high—approximately 2.56 inches wide by 1.18 inches high. Surviving examples appear in entirely colorless glass, amber glass, or in mixed combinations such as colorless lids paired with amber bases, offering collectors subtle variations within the same model. It is quite rare to find a base that still carries a printed label reading “BRILLANTINE CRISTALLISÉE COTY”
Collector’s Note: Authentic early examples—those produced directly by Lalique—bear the relief-molded signature “LALIQUE DÉPOSÉ” on the underside. After Coty established its own glassworks, later productions of this model were either unsigned, marked simply “Coty,” or lack the relief signature entirely, making the underside an important point of authentication. The model, known as Coty-Box-1, dates to circa 1911.
Reference: Félix Marcilhac, René Lalique — Catalogue raisonné of the glasswork, Les Éditions de l’Amateur, Paris, 2011. This box appears in the section “Perfumers’ Boxes”, listed under no. COTY–2 and reproduced on page 967.
