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Jules Ziegler

Decanter, or Perfume-brazier

Artist

Jules Ziegler
Langres, France, 1804 – Paris 1856

Title

Decanter, or Perfume-brazier

Date

About 1840

Materials

Salt-glazed stoneware

Dimensions

51.5 x 29.1 x 16.5 cm

Credits

Purchase, Claire Gohier Fund, gift in memory of Dr. Alicja Lipecka Czernick and her husband, Dr. Stanislas Czernick, gifts of Neil Rossy and Mark Anthony Brands, inv. 2012.72

Collection

Decorative Arts and Design

Foreshadowing the eclecticism that would dominate the decorative arts during the second half of the nineteenth century, French artist and ceramicist Jules Ziegler created salt-glazed stoneware vessels using techniques, forms and motifs inspired by a multitude of cultural and historic sources. A painter trained in the studio of Ingres, Ziegler opened a stoneware manufactory in 1838, where he devoted himself to the revival of the salt-glazing techniques of the German Renaissance, a once modest medium that he elevated to an art through the development of new and innovative forms. Ziegler favoured an aesthetic characterized by an eclectic accumulation of decorative elements, including German Renaissance ornamentation, traditional Chinese iconography and Hispano-Moresque motifs. The arabesques and central star on the body of this vessel were inspired by the decor of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, the restoration of which incited a great deal of interest during this period.

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