Georges Hoentschel (1855-1915) was an architect, sculptor and collector, as well as a ceramicist. he was born in the same year as his close friend Jean Carriès who was a great influence on his contemporaries, including Hoentschel, in his use of stoneware as an art material. Hoentschel enthusiastically followed Carriès to St Amand-en-Puisaye, adopting the potter's life in about 1888-90. He made this large jardinière in collaboration wirth a sculptor, Frederic Deschamps and it was donated to the Museum with a group of French furniture to represent the 'new art', otherwise known as art nouveau. As a collector, Hoentschel amassed French art from the middle ages to his own time. By 1908 he had sold the major proportion of the earlier pieces to J.Pierpoint Morgan, who subsequently presented them to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Hoentschel donated his own collection of Carriès' ceramics to the French state in 1900 after the much-loved potter's early death. In 1904 Hoentschel was exhibiting his own ceramics in the international exhibition in St Louis and towards the end of his life he returned to Paris to work at a friend's studio until his death in 1915.