£6,875
Decorative Arts: Design since 1860 | 593
Auction: 1 April 2020 at 11:00 BST
each with polychromatic décor in the Japonisme style, comprising of birds, butterflies and insects amongst blossoming foliage, each with impressed maker’s marks in red under base TH. DECK
Provenance: Property from Newbattle Abbey, Midlothian
Note: Born in Guebwiller, Haut-Rhin, Théodore Deck moved to Vienna as a young man, training as a stove-maker and producing work for Schönbrunn Palace. He returned to France in 1847 and, impressed by the majolica wares shown by the Minton factory at the Exposition Universelle of 1855, Deck was moved to produce his own. In 1856 he established his faïence workshop Joseph-Théodore Deck Ceramique Française, initially producing ceramics in the Islamic and Turkish Iznik style. Throughout the 1880s Deck’s pottery began to reflect elements of japonisme, a popular element of the Aesthetic Movement in the late 19th century.
Working with notable artists such Raphaël Collin, Deck developed a number of his own glazes, the most familiar being bleu de Deck, used in this pair of baluster vases.
Deck’s obituary in the New York Times recognises that it was "at the Exhibitions of Decorative Arts, in Paris in 1880 and 1884, [that] he attained world-wide celebrity with his vases, red, turquoise, Deck blue, and other colors (sic), limpid, profound, and dazzling." A committed aesthete, "Deck died at Sèvres, in the little pavilion-with rooms of gold, satin, and velvet, filled with vases painted in manganese violet and eel yellow colors (sic), lacquers, netsukes, and swords of Japan…. He was inseparable from his surroundings; he wore the air of their art and charm as if he had been born among them."