Selected works

Comparative literature :
Etienne Tornier, Adrien Dalpayrat, the Peter Marino collection, 2020, éditions Phaidon, n°149, p.220

Very organic in form, our vase features a beautiful oxblood red, green and ochre glaze, as well as “ribbed” decoration. In the early 1890s, Dalpayrat joined forces with sculptor Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix. The ceramist developed his famous flamed covers, and the sculptor created entirely new vase shapes inspired by nature, notably the original shapes of coloquintes or cucurbits.

It was also at this time that Dalpayrat abandoned the appellation of “painter on porcelain” and began to define himself as a “ceramist” or “artist-ceramist”. He devoted himself mainly to stoneware, a material revered not only for its Japanese associations, but also for its association with traditional French utensils. His sudden interest in this material may well have been inspired by the much-publicized success of Ernest Chaplet and Auguste Delaherche at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair.

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 demonstrated by the vases and voids decorated 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. The glaze, covering the form, with its drips, accidents and contrasts, forms the decoration of the vase.

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.

The production of critically acclaimed artistic stoneware reached its peak in the late 1890s. Art critic Louis de Fourcaud praised the beauty of the works exhibited at the Salon each year in the Revue des arts décoratifs:

“M. Dalpayrat and Mme Lesbros exhibited together pots, vases, jugs where beautiful blues and purples form, with a red of rare intensity, like the tapers of unequal bangs or like jaspures where the vivid colors have mutually and splendidly splashed!”

This “ribbed” or “coloquinte” pattern can be found in a number of important vases, including those in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Musée du Petit Palais and the Peter Marino collection.