Vase and cover, copper inlaid with silver and gilt bronze stand, Christofle et Cie and Emile Auguste Reiber, Paris, ca. 1867

Vase and cover on a gilt bronze stand. Copper, patinated and inlaid witha design of flowers and foliage in silver.

Given by Christolfe and Company

Art Nouveau Exhibition, Bowes Museum RF.2005/100

Emile Auguste Reiber was born in Schlettstadt in Alsace. In 1847 he started studying architecture in Paris and in 1850 he was awarded the Grand Prix; therafter he became increasingly involved with industrial design. In association with the ceramicist Theodore Deck (1823-91), in 1851 he founded the influential periodical L'Art Pour Tous, which specilaised in the application of art to industry.

Reiber was distinguished for his ability to assimilate rapidly a whole range of historical styles. He drew with equal facility from ornament of the German Renaissance, the Louis XVI period and the antique. He supplied a range of Islamic designs for the London Exhibition of 1862 and was fascinated by Japanese art which was beginning to emerge in Paris from the late 1850s.

In the early 1860s he joined the Christolfe design studio and by the end of the decade he was placed in charge of it. Reiber's influence made Christolfe one of the earliest and most important suppliers of Japonisme metalwork.

The oriental shape of this vase, based on a traditional Japanese ceramic pot, the use of inlaid metal and the deliberate patination of the metal all register the influence of the Japanese decorative arts. The gilt bronze stand in a Louis XVI style is a reference to the 18th century French custom of mounting imported Chinese ceramics in ormolu.

There was still some confusion between the arts of China and Japan at this time. Ernest Chesneau, in an article Le Japon a Paris for the Gazette des Beaux Arts in 1878, recalled the dearth of knowledge of the two cultures prior to 1867: "curiosities coming from the Far East that one indistictly confused under the name chinoiserie." The Paris Exhibition of 1867 included an exhibitsent by the Japanese government that constituted the first major display of Japanese art seen in France. This radically altered the public perception of Japanese art and, at the close of the exhibition, many of the objects were dispersed on the Parisian market, thus further encouraging interest in this field.

But Japanese prints had been available in quantity in Paris since the late 1850s. Two principal sources of supply were Le Porte Chinoise of 36 Rue Vivienne and Desage on the Rue de Rivoli. By the 1870s, and possibly before, they were even being sold through large Parisian department stores such as Le Bon Marche. Equally important was Auguste Delatre's publication of Receuil de dessins pour l'art et l'industrie by Adalbert de Beaumont and Eugene V. Collinot in 1859. This folio album included 18 engraved plates of Japanese birds, flowers, insects, marine life, samurai and landscapes largely based on Hokusai prints. Reiber's design for the inlaid silver on this vase could have been drawn from either Delatre's publication or any one of the original albums of prints which were in circulation.

The design of this vase, therefore, amalgamates a variety of sources and is an early metalwork example of Japonisem, the influence of Japan on the French decorative arts. In its opening stages, the attitude of the early Japonistes - and Reiber was one of the most important amongst them - was that Japanese art provided yet another source of inspiration for the historic revivalism so prevalent among the decorative arts at the time.

Eric Turner in Art and Design in Europe and America 1800-1900, ed. Simon Jervis, London, Academy Editions, 1978. pp.128-9.

Emile Auguste Reiber (1826-93) studied architecture in Paris in 1847, but spent most of his career as a professional designer. From the 1860s he designed metalwork for Christofle becoming artistic director of the firm in about 1870. He was one of the earliest and most important French metalwork designers to be influenced by Japanese art and by the late 1870s he was regarded as the high priest of "Japonisme".

700:1, 2-1869