Art pottery is a term for pottery with artistic aspirations, made in relatively small quantities, mostly between about 1870 and 1930.Bergesen, 213; Muller, 60; see also the ranges in the titles of the books in further reading. The term has had a rather longer life in America. Typically, sets of the usual tableware items are excluded from the term; instead the objects produced are mostly decorative vessels such as , jugs, bowls and the like which are sold singly. The term originated in the later 19th century, and is usually used only for pottery produced from that period onwards. It tends to be used for ceramics produced in factory conditions, but in relatively small quantities, using skilled workers, with at the least close supervision by a designer or some sort of artistic director. Studio pottery is a step up, supposed to be produced in even smaller quantities, with the hands-on participation of an artist-potter, who often performs all or most of the production stages.Cooper, 206; Jacobs, 19; Osborne, 132; this is famously and most emphatically stated by Bernard Leach on the first page of his A Potter's Book (Faber, 1940) But the use of both terms can be elastic. Ceramic art is often a much wider term, covering all pottery that comes within the scope of art history, but "ceramic artist" is often used for hands-on artist potters in studio pottery.
The term implied both a progressive design style and also a closer relationship between the design of a piece and its production process. Art pottery was part of the Arts and Crafts movement, and a reaction to the technically superb but over-ornamented wares made by the large European factories, especially in porcelain.Savage, 24–25 Later art pottery represented the ceramic arm of the Aesthetic Movement and Art Nouveau.Sullivan; Bergesen, 213 Many of the wares are earthenware or stoneware, and there is often an interest in East Asian ceramics, especially historical periods when the individual craftsmen had been allowed a large role in the design and decoration. There is often great interest in ceramic glaze effects, including lustreware, and relatively less in china painting (still less in transfer printing).Bergesen, 246; Sullivan
Throwing pieces on the potter's wheel, which hardly played any part in the large factories of the day, was often used, and many pieces were effectively unique, especially in their glazes, applied in ways that encouraged random effects. Compared to the production processes in larger factories, where each stage usually involved different workers, the same worker often took a piece through several stages of production, though studio pottery typically took this even further, and several makers of art pottery, if they became successful, drifted back towards conventional factory methods, as cheaper and allowing larger quantities to be made.Jacobs, 17–21; Ellison, 261–262; Osborne, 132
The most significant countries producing art pottery were Britain and France, soon followed by the United States. American art pottery has many similarities, but some differences,Jacobs, 17–18 with its European equivalents. The term is not often used outside the Western world, except in "folk art pottery", often used for some village-based mingei traditions in Japanese pottery. Wendy Jones Nakanishi, "The Anxiety of Influence: Ambivalent Relations Between Japan's 'Mingei' and Britain's 'Arts and Crafts' Movements", Electronic Journal of Japanese Studies, 28 October 2008; Moeran, Brian, Folk Art Potters of Japan: Beyond an Anthropology of Aesthetics, 2013, Routledge, , 9781136796739
There were also close links with amateur china painting, which had become a very popular hobby, especially for middle-class women, in the same decades.Anderson, 128–140; Ellison, 263 In London, the Regent Street jewellers Howell James & Co. became a leading showplace for both amateur and professional work, organizing exhibitions and competitions.Anderson, 128–140
Very many art potteries were newly established, especially in America, but in Europe many long-established ceramic manufacturers embraced the movement, usually by establishing dedicated sections of their business, kept apart from their higher-volume wares.Wood, 69: Bergesen 213, and see entries for individual companies in both This was especially the case for large English firms who had become mainly associated with less glamorous utilitarian wares. Doulton & Co., later Royal Doulton, was hugely profitable from utilitarian , above all sewage and drain pipes, and able to experiment, establishing links with the nearby Lambeth School of Art. Doulton revived fine English stoneware, and raised its own profile; it is unclear whether the art wares of Lambeth ever made much profit.Wood, 76–83; Bergeson, 213–217; Mundt, 24; Jacobs, 18 Maw & Co was, with Mintons, one of the main makers of decorative , but launched "Art Pottery" lines by the 1880s, some by Walter Crane, who had been designing tiles for them since the 1870s.Bergesen, 557–567
While women made up about half the workforce of the Stoke-on-Trent potteries in Staffordshire in the 20th century, they tended to be assistants to husbands or fathers, doing "coarse and degrading labour", often handling toxic materials. Women could not be apprenticed, and men maintained control of higher-skilled and lucrative positions. There were some exceptions such as Daisy Makeig-Jones, who successfully designed the "Fairyland Lustre" pottery series for Wedgwood.
Conditions, and the potential to rise, were better at the Doulton studios in London. The Doulton studios were unusual in this period in allowing the decorators, about half of them female, to sign or initial pieces, and several have acquired individual reputations, like the sisters Hannah and Florence Barlow. By 1895 the Doulton studios employed 345 female artists.Vincentelli, Moira, Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels, 2000, Manchester University Press, , 9780719038402, 91
A report in The Art Journal on a visit to Mintons' "Art-pottery studio at South Kensington", run by the artist William Stephen Coleman, reported that the designers and decorators there worked segregated by sex, and was at pains to stress the position of the ladies: p. 100
... from twenty to twenty-five educated women, of good social position, employed without loss of dignity, and in an agreeable and profitable manner. All have received the necessary Art-instruction, either at the Central Training Schools at South Kensington, or at the schools at Queen's Square, or at Lambeth."
Two of the biggest names, then and now, in the British art pottery scene, offer contrasting degrees of involvement in the actual production process. William De Morgan was not hands-on with the clay as a thrower, "William de Morgan", Morgan Foundation; Jacobs, 17 while at least three of the four Martin Brothers were personally engaged in production. They are now regarded as among the earliest makers of studio pottery, but that term had not been devised at the time.Wood, 91–93; Bergesen, 218–219; Cooper, 206; Aberystwyth University, page with bio & nearly 40 images Another major figure, Christopher Dresser, was a designer whose name is closely associated with the Linthorpe Art Pottery, but may never have actually visited the works in Yorkshire (now Teesside);Bergesen, 246 he also designed for Mintons (porcelain) and other potteries.Bergesen, 408–409
Victoria Bergesen groups the wares into broad stylistic groups. Firstly came stonewares and earthenwares that were initially strongly influenced by historical styles. Then there were painted wares that related to the Aesthetic Movement, and overlapped with amateur china painting. Another group made wares with a rural, folk art, style, often in very small potteries; this perhaps survived the longest, and from the 20th century is often called "craft pottery". Another group was interested in advanced glaze effects, whether trying to recreate historic Asian ones such as sang de boeuf glaze (for example Bernard Moore), or new experimental ones such as the still radioactive orange uranium glazes.Bergesen, 213, 224 on uranium glazes by Pilkington's Lancastrian Pottery & Tiles Then came another wave of hand-painting, but less realist, and more geometric and stylized. This style greatly influenced industrial wares after World War I.Bergesen, 213
The earliest significant figure was Théodore Deck, who founded his faience works in 1856, and initially explored styles and techniques from Islamic pottery with great success. When Japonisme arrived in the 1870s he embraced this and other art pottery trends with enthusiasm, finally conquering the French establishment when he was made art director of Sèvres porcelain in 1887. Several important figures from the next generation were trained by Deck. "Théodore Deck and the Islamic Style", by Frederica Todd Harlow, from Aramco World; Sullivan
Ernest Chaplet was an artist and hands-on potter, mainly in stoneware, who later worked with Paul Gauguin, whose many ceramic sculptures cannot really be squeezed into the category of art pottery. Much of the ceramic output of Jean-Joseph Carriès, a sculptor who died young in 1894, was also sculpture, including many faces and heads, often with grotesque expressions, but he made several conventional pots, often with thick unctuous ash glaze effects in the Japanese style. Other leading figures were Auguste Delaherche, Edmond Lachenal, Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat, a great creator of glazes, and Clément Massier. The large American-owned Limoges porcelain firm of Haviland & Co. was important in encouraging new styles, with much production being exported.Sullivan Their stand at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition was one of the important influences there on later American pottery, especially in its barbotine painted wares. These, thickly painted with ceramic slip, allowed similar effects to the Impressionist paintings being produced in the same period.Ellison, 43–53
The glaze specialist Taxile Doat moved in the opposite direction to others; after nearly 30 years at Sèvres he set up his own small studio in 1895, and in 1909 moved to teach and pot in America. Alexandre Bigot, originally a chemistry teacher, made some pottery himself, with individual glazes, but was mainly notable for his designs for Art Nouveau architectural ceramics, created by his own large firm. "Alexandre Bigot", Jason Jacques Gallery Hector Guimard was an Art Nouveau architect and designer, mainly in metal (including the famous Paris Metro entries) but also designed ceramics, many for Sèvres. A generation later, the Mougin brothers emerged around 1900, and worked in Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles until the 1930s.
The first major porcelain company to seriously change its styles was Royal Copenhagen, which made radical changes from 1883, when it was bought by Aluminia, an earthenware company. Arnold Krog, an architect under 30 with no practical experience of the industry, was made artistic director the next year, and rapidly shifted designs in the same directions art pottery was exploring, commissioning many painters to design for the factory. Japanese influences were initially very strong. The new wares soon won prizes at various international exhibitions, and most of the large porcelain makers began to move in similar directions,Battie, 162–163; Mundt, 30–31 causing problems for the smaller art potteries.
Art Nouveau produced an upsurge in adventurous art glass, rather to the detriment of pottery. The French artist Émile Gallé was rather typical, making ceramics early in his career, but largely abandoning them for glass by 1892 (when young he took over the family's factories making both).Arwas, 12–23; Mundt, 31–32
In European countries not mentioned above, art pottery was slow to develop, and by the 1890s all the large porcelain factories in Europe were at least beginning to commission designs in Art Nouveau and other styles,Mundt, 23–26, 30, 33 tending to suppress the development of smaller potteries. The Blaue Rispe tableware pattern by Richard Riemerschmid for Meissen is an example – this was not popular on first launch, but was revived much later.Grove, 97 Max Laeuger, mainly an architect, was the only very significant 19th-century German art potter, as a designer only, and in an Art Nouveau style from the late 1890s. "Max Laeuger" , Les Arts décoratifs, Centre de documentation des musées (in French) To a large extent, small art potteries after Art Nouveau are called studio pottery, and began exploring new styles and imperatives,Rosemary Hill, "Writing about the studio crafts", 190–198, in The Culture of Craft, Ed. Peter Dormer, 1997, Manchester University Press, , 9780719046186, google books although many potteries continued to make pottery in the old spirit until at least World War II, especially in America.Wood, 72 and 87, where he includes potteries founded in 1974 and 1997 in his chapter on "art stoneware".
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