Faience Manufacturing Company FMCo Vase - Barbotine #206 Circa 1881 10.5"

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Fabulous Barbotine vase with richly colored flowers and polychrome glazes.

EDWARD LYCETT AT THE FAIENCE MANUFACTURING COMPANY 1884–1890
In 1884, … Read more Fabulous Barbotine vase with richly colored flowers and polychrome glazes.

EDWARD LYCETT AT THE FAIENCE MANUFACTURING COMPANY 1884–1890
In 1884, FMCo underwent a dramatic transformation that attests to its ambition to succeed at art pottery production. The firm expanded its Brooklyn pottery-making facilities, moved its Manhattan showrooms to a new location, and recruited Edward Lycett, a renowned ceramic artist, as its new art director.

Within two years of his arrival, Lycett had transformed FMCo’s artistic agenda. He experimented with techniques that enabled the firm to produce a wide range of refined ceramic bodies, and he developed bold and eclectic designs that drew inspiration from fashionable English and European wares as well as from venerated ancient, medieval, and Renaissance objects in major museum collections. More than fifty large-scale shapes of Near and Far Eastern derivation, embellished with exotic motifs in vivid enamels enriched with raised gold paste as well as jeweled and luster decoration, have been identified and became hallmarks of the firm.

The company promoted its stylish new wares in trade publications oriented towards jewelry and fancy goods wholesalers as well as in periodicals aimed at elite consumers. Positive press helped to accelerate the firm’s success, and FMCo was soon retailed at all the major art goods establishments from New York City to San Francisco, including Tiffany & Company of New York.

Despite the great beauty of FMCo’s wares, the firm’s focus on art pottery proved to be its downfall. Producing ornamental wares without a commercial line of goods to offset the expense as other Greenpoint potteries did forced it to cease production in 1890 and reorganize as agents for a French porcelain manufacturer. See less