In every British account of studio pottery there’s a condescending nod to French Art Nouveau ceramics, with their new glaze effects, stunning colours and iridescent surfaces. These ceramics were strikingly different from the refined porcelain current in Europe at the time. The main names were Clément Massier, Ernest Chaplet, Theodore Deck and Emile Decoeur.
Every large museum has examples, rarely featured prominently, and anyone interested soon finds that there were chemist potters other than these four masters. In France there were Paul Jeanneney, Clément Massier, Raoul Lachenal, Jean Carriès and the architectural ceramist Alexandre Bigot. In the USA there were Hugh C. Robertson and Taxile Doat. In Britain there were W. Howson Taylor at the Ruskin Pottery, Harry Nixon at Royal Doulton and Bernard Moore. In Hungary, Zsolnay and Herend both employed ceramic artists who worked in this medium, so did the Royal Danish Porcelain Company, Bing and Grøndalhl and, in Germany, Köningsliche Porzellan Manufaktur.
With so many fine Art Nouveau potters it’s surprising that there have been so few exhibitions and that so little has been written about them. Paul Arthur’s French Art Nouveau Ceramics was published in 2015 and in 2016 the Kunstmuseum den Haag had an exhibition French Ceramics 1875 – 1945 (noting that the last exhibition had been in 1913), accompanied by M. Lambrechts’ L’Objet sublime: Franse ceramiek 1875-1945.
At auction these ceramics fetch high prices. This small vase by Emile Decoeur, for example, reached $4,063 at Rago. Second hand copies of Arthur’s and Lambrechts’ books also fetch high prices, so there is considerable interest.
MARSHALL COLMAN 