Vase

Atelier de Glatigny manufactured this ceramic vase around 1900. The designer has combined the aesthetics of the celadon glaze with a finely worked, nature-inspired silver mount. Sir Colin Anderson acquired this piece in 1966 from John Jesse, and added it to his growing Art Nouveau collection.

The Atelier de Glatigny formed in the 1890s in Versailles, France and comprised anonymous potters, decorative artists, glaze chemist and technicians. The Glatigny workshop manufactured small quantities of stoneware, as well as porcelain decorated with crystalline and flambé glazes. [1] The quality of their art pottery rivalled the production of other small studios in Paris.

Wheel thrown to create an ovoid-shaped with a slender neck, the stoneware vessel has been decorated with an irregular speckled green glaze that shows blue-brown around the waist. Reactive art glazes were a feature of Atelier de Glatigny’s ceramic production.

The bottle vase has been finished with a silver gilt foot and neck ring, and is decorated with a distinctive silver mount by the Paris jeweller and goldsmith Lucien Gaillard (1861-1942). [2] Gaillard was a contemporary of René Lalique, who similarly worked in the Art Nouveau style. Gaillard’s applied silver decoration is modelled after branches of mistletoe and possesses naturalistically rendered leaves and berries.

The underside of the ceramic vase is impressed with mark ‘Glatigny’. The silver mount is stamped ‘L.G.’ for Lucien Gaillard and has a punched hallmark or ‘poinçon’.

Vanessa Tothill, April 2021

[1] https://www.jasonjacques.com/historic/atelier-de-glatigny [accessed 16 April 2021]

[2] https://www.jasonjacques.com/historic/atelier-de-glatigny [accessed 16 April 2021]