Auguste Delaherche

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Low vase, stoneware, 1905, 17.5 × 26 cm, 3.4 kg

Auguste Delaherche (27 December 1857 – 27 June 1940) was a French ceramicist, who was a leading figure in French art pottery through the Art Nouveau period. Like other leading French potters of the period, he was intensely interested in ceramic glaze effects of colour and surface texture. He began his career making stoneware, but later also made porcelain in his studio.[1]

Print of Delaherche at work in 1891

After some years potting in Paris, in 1894 he returned to his native region, and ten years later changed his operation to a one-man studio pottery. He also moved in stages from making exclusively stoneware to only making porcelain.

Career

He trained at the

salt-glazed stoneware in 1883 near Beauvais, and in 1887 bought the atelier of Ernest Chaplet in rue Blomet, Paris. Chaplet had moved to Choisy-le-Roi in the suburbs.[3]

Initially he made stoneware pieces in several versions, and did not do the throwing himself, giving drawings to assistants. His pieces were almost all vases of one sort or another. He preferred relatively simple basic shapes, often augmented with bold ribs or handles, concentrating on the surface effects, especially high-temperature "flambé" glazes. His work came to the notice of other potters at the exhibition held by the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in 1887, and then won prizes at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889.[4] He won gold medals at both, and the Exposition Universelle of 1900, again in Paris.[5]

Vase with four green handles, stoneware, c. 1889

In 1894 he left Paris and set up his workshop at "Les Sables Rouges", in the hamlet of Armentières, Oise, near the village of Lachapelle-aux-Pots, and his hometown of Beauvais, and in the traditional stoneware potting district of the Pays de Bray.[6] He was rarely seen in Paris thereafter, though his pieces continued to be sold at the top galleries there, and as a result he acquired in the Paris art scene something of a myth as a rural "hermit".[7] He also began to make porcelain pieces.[8]

In 1904 there was a major change in his way of working, as he became, in modern terms, a

kaolin needed for porcelain.[13] Indeed, pottery clay was still being extracted commercially at Armentières in 1974.[14]

He was created a "chevalier" of the

Légion d'honneur in 1894, with the painter René Ménard as sponsor, and in 1920 promoted to "officier".[15]

Legacy

His bust by Pierre Félix Masseau is in the Musée départemental de l'Oise (MUDO) in Beauvais, which also claims to have the "most important" collection of his ceramics.[16] The Musée de la Poterie de La Chapelle aux Pots has a collection.[17] Other large museum collections have examples, especially in France, the United States, and Britain.[18] One group assembled by the American collector, Ellen Dexter Sharpe (1861–1963), who corresponded with Delaherche, has mostly ended up in the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.[19]

  • Vase with peacock feathers, stoneware, c. 1889
    Vase with
    peacock
    feathers, stoneware, c. 1889
  • Stoneware vase: mistletoe with silver mounts and glass beads, 1890
    Stoneware vase: mistletoe with silver mounts and glass beads, 1890
  • Vase, stoneware, c. 1890
    Vase, stoneware, c. 1890
  • Vase, stoneware, c. 1890
    Vase, stoneware, c. 1890
  • Vase, stoneware, c. 1893
    Vase, stoneware, c. 1893
  • Vase, stoneware, sang de boeuf glaze, shape recorded in a sketchbook of 1893; 12 examples were made.[20]
    Vase, stoneware, sang de boeuf glaze, shape recorded in a sketchbook of 1893; 12 examples were made.[20]
  • Garden vase, after 1894
    Garden vase, after 1894
  • Covered stoneware bowl, with metal mounts, 1899-1900
    Covered stoneware bowl, with metal mounts, 1899-1900
  • Photo published in 1900
    Photo published in 1900
  • Vase, 1900
    Vase, 1900
  • Porcelain cup, 1903
    Porcelain cup, 1903

Notes

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Auguste Delaherche.
  1. ^ Sullivan; Orsay; V&A; Grove
  2. ^ V&A
  3. ^ Sullivan; MUDO; V&A
  4. ^ V&A; Orsay; MUDO
  5. ^ MUDO
  6. ^ Sullivan; Tornier; Beauvais; Photo "Les Sables Rouges, atelier", taken 1901
  7. ^ Tornier; Sullivan; Orsay; V&A; Grove. For example the title of a published article in English on him was "The Master Potter of La Chapelle aux Pots: Felix Auguste Delaherche, Hermit and Philosopher" (William Francklyn Paris, 1920, in La France: An American Magazine, Volume 5 (google books, reprinted in French Arts & Letters: And Other Essays, 1937, Kennikat Press, google books
  8. ^ Sullivan; Orsay; V&A; Grove
  9. ^ Sullivan; Orsay; V&A; Grove
  10. ^ Tornier, final page: "De son propre jardin il extrait l’argile qu’il modèle" ("He extracts the clay he models from his own garden").
  11. ISBN 0904041840
    , 9780904041842; also Tornier, final page
  12. ^ Tornier, final page, "Suivant ses principes esthétiques, il réalise ses objets au cours de l’année et n’utilise son four qu’une fois par an. Il reste ensuite devant son four pendant trente heurs sans dormir pour être sûr de maintenir la chaleur."
  13. ^ Beauvais
  14. ^ Cartier, Claudine and John, "L'activité céramique dans le pays de Bray : essai de localisation", 190, 1974, Revue archéologique de Picardie (in French)
  15. ^ Archives Nationales, on Leonore database
  16. ^ MUDO, "Le MUDO – Musée de l'Oise conserve la plus importante collection de céramiques d’Auguste Delaherche".
  17. ^ Musée de la Poterie de La Chapelle aux Pots, website
  18. LACMA
    , Chicago and others.
  19. ^ Tornier
  20. ^ "Tall vase with four handles", ca. 1893–94, Metropolitan Museum of Art

References

Further reading

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