Early 20th Century Art Nouveau Vase Cache Pot Barbotine Ceramic Gustave De Bruyn Lille

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Art Nouveau Vase Cache Pot Barbotine

Large majolica vase or cache pot made in the early 1900s in perfect Art … Read more Art Nouveau Vase Cache Pot Barbotine

Large majolica vase or cache pot made in the early 1900s in perfect Art Nouveau style decorated with chestnut and chestnut leaves. Mascaron head fawn on the sides . Very nice colors and nicely glaze .

Planter measures 10 in diameter and 9 in height

Stamped with catalog number , unmarked but close production to renowned French manufacturer of Lille Gustave De Bruyn .

Barbotine — the technique in which wet clay slip is applied to an unfired ceramic surface and modeled into three-dimensional decoration before firing — found its greatest French practitioner in Gustave De Bruyn, whose Fives-Lille manufactory produced work of exceptional quality from the 1880s through the early 1900s. De Bruyn's pieces are distinguished by the confidence of the slip application — the decoration does not sit timidly on the surface but rises from it with sculptural authority — and by the naturalistic subjects that reflect the Art Nouveau movement's fundamental conviction that nature was the only legitimate source of ornament.

The cache pot form — a decorative outer vessel designed to conceal a plain flower pot — is among the most useful of all antique ceramic forms in a contemporary interior. It transforms what it holds: a plant in a plain pot is a plant; a plant in a De Bruyn barbotine cache pot is an arrangement.

De Bruyn faience is actively collected in France and increasingly recognized in international markets. A signed or marked example in good condition is a genuine acquisition. See less