European Art Pottery

For centuries, art pottery and fine porcelain pieces have been a European specialty, whether it's a Gouda or Delft vase from the Netherlands, a Meissen figure from Germany, or a colorful majolica platter from Italy. During the Art Deco period, Czechoslovakian artists produced brightly colored pitchers and bowls decorated in geometric and floral designs. Austrian sculptor Walter Bosse got his start making whimsical ceramic objects before moving on to bronzes, while tin-glazed earthenware known as faience continues to be a source of pride for French ceramists. For our purposes, the story begins in Meissen, Germany, in the early 18th century, when an alchemist named Johann Friedrich Böttger was locked in a Dresden castle until he produced a porcelain as fine as the Kakiemon porcelain of Japan. Using a clay called kaolin mined near the town of Kolditz, Böttger made the first true hard-paste porcelain in 1708, put it into production by 1710, and improved upon his own creation shortly thereafter when he substituted the Kolditz clay for an even better base material in the nearby town of Aue. Initially, this Meissen porcelain was fired with very little glazing, in part because Böttger’s jailer/patron, Augustus the Strong, was enthralled with the appearance of the white clay body. Before long, though, Augustus had commissioned some 35,000 porcelain pieces, including a menagerie of 458 animals and birds, for his “Japanese Palace” in Dresden. After Böttger’s death in 1719, Johann Gottlieb Kirchner joined the Meissen factory—it was Kirchner who made all those animals and birds. Another legendary Meissen modeler was Johann Joachim Kändler, who worked at Meissen for 40 years. Like his mentor Kirchner, Kändler was incredibly productive, bringing to life in porcelain more than 1,000 different figures, including a 21-piece band of monkey musicians and their monkey conductor. Meanwhile, porcelain figures were becoming a trademark of nearby Dresden, where blanks formed in Meissen were brought to life with colorful glazes. Dresden became well known for its Italian commedia dell'arte characters, as well as Dresden lace, which was produced by submerging real fabric lace into porcelain slip—when fired, the fabric burned away, leaving the imitative porcelain behind. Around the middle of the 18th century, Augustus’ granddaughter, Maria Amalia of Saxony, founded the Capodimonte porcelain factory in Naples, Italy. About 100 years later, the Capodimonte franchise continues to be well known for glazes that appear to be still wet, whether they’re covering hobos, drunks, or angels. France found its own source of kaolin in the late 18th century in the town of Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche, not far from the city of Limoges, whose name would ultimately become far more famous. The first Limoges porcelain factory was founded in 1771 by brothers Massié and Fourneira Grellet—in 1784, the King of France purchased the plant so its white porcelain could be decorated exclusively at the royal porcelain factory at Sèvres outside of Paris. Of course, porcelain was not the first clay body on the European continent or in the British Isles. In the 16th century, a Frenchman named Bernard Palissy had produced an enormous array of vividly colored, high-relief, lead-glazed plates, platters, and pitchers. In Spain, at roughly the same time, a tin-glazed earthenware called majolica was also used for similar day-to-day purposes. By the time of The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, Minton & Company of Staffordshire was calling its variation of this earthenware Palissy ware, mostly because Minton’s new art director, Léon Arnoux, was French. Palissy ware was actually a more accurate description of Minton’s new line, but the name majolica stuck, whether it was being produced by the venerable English firm of Wedgwood, Italian potteries such as Ginori and Cantagalli, or the Royal Porcelain Manufactory in Germany. Even older is Delft pottery, a soft earthenware pottery sealed with a watercolor-like lead glaze that was opacified with ash or tin oxide. Though the technique of making delftware is similar to that of making majolica, delftware is from Belgium, possibly brought there by the descendant of potter Guido Andries, who emigrated to Antwerp from Italy. Potters in Antwerp also fled Spanish conquerors for the Netherlands in 1585, so its actual origins are clouded. What is known, though, is that delftware potteries proliferated during the 17th century, when more than 30 factories in Delft made everything from beer mugs and decorative tiles to wall pockets and candlesticks. Another clay body of note is the parian ware produced during the 19th century by the Belleek Pottery on the River Erne in Northern Ireland. Though parian ware was a Staffordshire invention, Belleek elevated it to art for the masses, again using figurines as the genre. But instead of clever commedia dell'arte characters, Belleek gave the world more sentimental fare, with titles like “Erin Awakening from Her Slumbers” and “Basket Bearing Boy and Girl.” Belleek shut down during 1884 to reinvent itself with what it called “Shamrock Ware.” European art potters of note from the 20th century include Clarice Cliff, whose colorful, Art Deco-inspired “Bizarre” ware vases, pitchers, and mugs were big sellers for Newport Pottery between the late 1920s and mid-1930s. Around the same time, across the North Sea, Swedish potteries produced pieces designed by Josef Ekberg with strong Art Nouveau and Art Deco influences. Later Swedish designers such as Berndt Friberg and Stig Lindberg were more modernist, while Danish potteries gave their wares a look that was something of a precursor to what people would eventually call a Mid-Century Modern aesthetic. Factories such as Royal Copenhagen, Bing & Grondahl, and Saxbo gave designers such as Axel Salto, Nils Thorsson, and Eva Staehr-Nielsen free rein. After World War II, during the 1960s and ’70s, West German potteries produced, among other styles, fat lava, named for the thick, encrusted glazes on these pieces that resemble frozen flows of radioactive-colored lava. Not content to make vases, German potteries such as Carstens, Spara, Ubelacker, and Ruscha produced fat lava floor vases, straight-sided jugs, and sculpture. And then, of course, there was Pablo Picasso, who designed but did not produce ceramic plates, pitchers, vases, and tiles from the late 1940s until his death in 1973, all of which bore his trademark scrawl. Picasso seemed to treat ceramics like three-dimensional prints. At the time, the art world gave them little regard, but today, the market for Picasso ceramics is brisk.