Glazed, enamelled and gilded stoneware bowl by Chaplet and Dammouse, Paris ca. 1885.

Brown stoneware bowl with glazed, enamelled and gilded decoration in the Japanese taste.

Purchased from Dr Paul Tauchner, Maria-Theresia, Straße 12, D.8000, München, 80.

Historical significance: Ernest Chaplet (1835-1909), born at Sèvres, began work at the State factory at the age of 12. He became a highly skilled ceramicist working in potteries at Choisy-le-Roi and Bourg-la-Reine and then for the Limoges manufacturers, the Haviland brothers, at a new workshop in Auteuil. In 1881 Haviland provided him with a studio at rue Blomet, Vaugirard, Paris. There he developed high temperature glazes on porcelain, and on stoneware while working with AL Dammouse (1848-1926) and other collaborators. In 1886 he bought the workshop and concentrated on these glazes, as an independent potter, keeping his glazes recipes and firing temperatures a closely-guarded secret. He was regarded by his contemporaries as the consummate ceramicist. Chaplet sold the workshop to Auguste Delaherche in 1887 and moved back to Choisy-le-Roi where he specialised in porcelain.

The treatment of the curving foliage is very similar to the famous vase acquired by the Danish collector Salomonsen, now in the Museum of Decorative Arts, Copenhagen.

This stoneware vase, with its stylized pattern of leaves and blossom, enriched with gilding is in the Japanese style. The elevation of stoneware to an art medium in France followed the exhibition of traditional Japanese wares in Paris in 1878. Responding also to local vernacular wares, the potter Ernest Chaplet was among the first to explore its potential. Japanese style also prompted an altogether looser aesthetic, with an interest in organic forms, rich surface patination, and abstracted decoration.

C.308-1983