Flamed Stoneware Bowl by Alexandre Bigot, France, 1914

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Description

Bearing the rectangular stamp dated 1914, the artist's signature, and the model number 1 beneath the base, this bowl is … Read more Bearing the rectangular stamp dated 1914, the artist's signature, and the model number 1 beneath the base, this bowl is a work by Alexandre Bigot (1862–1927), a Doctor of Science and professor at the École des Mines, who left teaching in the late 1880s to found a stoneware factory in Mer (Loir-et-Cher) that would eventually employ up to 150 workers.

His work was recognized with a Grand Prix at the 1900 Universal Exhibition, while he was collaborating with Paul Jouve and René Binet on the main gate of the Champs-Élysées. The piece is dated the same year that Bigot definitively ceased his ceramic production, making it a work from his very last workshop period.

The hand-thrown stoneware body has a low hemispherical shape with a continuous profile, without any break between the body and the rim. The high-fire glaze, obtained by firing at high temperature in a reducing atmosphere, produces on the exterior a celadon yellow-green background traversed by irregular brown-manganese streaks—a characteristic flame effect of Bigot stoneware, achieved by layering glazes with different coefficients of expansion that migrate during firing. The interior features a crackled ivory glaze nuanced with blue and brown, the network of cracks indicating a deliberate gap between the shrinkage of the glaze and that of the stoneware body.

This mastery of flame and crackle effects places Bigot in the direct lineage of research on special glazes conducted by Ernest Chaplet and Edmond Lachenal, and in affinity with the contemporary productions of Taxile Doat and the Sèvres Manufactory in the realm of art stoneware. This piece has an attribution mark,
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