Selected works

Like a magnificent descendant of the great tradition of 18th-century mounted objects, our jardinière is part of Dalpayrat’s rarest and most luxurious production.

Composed of an organic-shaped bowl glazed in oxblood red, the ceramist’s specialty, the jardinière is elegantly enhanced by a gilded bronze mounting of flowers and foliage.

Like the Symbolist painters and sculptors, Dalpayrat uses man, animal and nature in his compositions. He differs from many of his colleagues in his desire to give a simple vase a meaning, a symbol, a metaphysical idea, as evidenced by the vases and voids adorned with animals and plant motifs. Dalpayrat is fascinated by organic forms and the effect of time on living things. These physical consequences become his aesthetic preoccupation, whether in the form or surface of the objects he designs. His aim is to sublimate the fruits of nature, to show their intrinsic beauty by freezing them under an oxblood glaze dotted with yellow, blue or anthracite-gray spots.

If the first revelation of Japanese art for Parisian artists was the print, ceramics was undoubtedly the other most fertile French enthusiasm, especially for Dalpayrat. The Parisian collections he visited featured not only pots, but also masks, such as the one on display at the Musée de Sèvres as early as 1876. In 1878, once again for the Exposition Universelle, the Japanese craze was revealed, notably for stoneware tea ceremony pieces, which encouraged Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat to create pieces in plant and animal forms. From the 1890s onwards, ceramists and glassmakers created a new style, breaking with the past. Ceramics adopted organic, asymmetrical lines. Firing accidents, flame effects and glaze drips created abstract decorations that revolutionized the art of fire.

Oxblood red enamel is one of Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat’s signatures, so much so that it is often referred to as “Dalpayrat red”. The ceramist, whose work on the border between Art Nouveau and Far Eastern ceramics made him famous, could boast of having unraveled the mystery of this fascinating color, mastered for centuries by the Chinese. In fact, he succeeded in obtaining this hue and these flamed effects on a very resistant stoneware, thanks to the oxidation of the copper and perfect control of the atmosphere and firing time. Beyond the red, shades of green or lead gray appear, adding depth to the piece. This invention received many accolades, notably at the Expositions universelles and the Salon de la Société nationale des beaux-arts, as well as at the Galerie Georges Petit.

Towards the end of the 19th century, Dalpayrat benefited from a growing network of dealers, including Siegfried Bing (1838-1905), who opened the L’Art nouveau gallery in December 1895 on rue de Provence in Paris. Eager to break down the boundaries between the major and minor arts, Siegfried Bing wished to show the incredible creative élan reflected in the most recent creations of sculptors, painters and craftsmen in Europe and the United States. The man who initially made his name in Europe and across the Atlantic as a dealer specializing in Asian art now intends to support contemporary creation. Adrien Dalpayrat is naturally one of the ceramists selected by Bing. At Siegfried Bing’s request, several artists, including designer Edward Colonna, goldsmith Ernest Cadeilhac, Alfred Féou and Keller, designed models and metal mounts for Dalpayrat’s stoneware.

The ceramist’s stoneware, already considered objects for the elite at the time, reached yet another level of luxury thanks to these gilded bronze, pewter or silver mounts.

A teapot by Dalpayrat, similar in style and workmanship to our own, is in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. This gilded silver mounting by Alfred Féau suggests that he may also have made our jardinière.