CHAPTER XXIII
CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN PORCELAIN
WE have seen that in England the new aims and the new schemes of decoration that have so profoundly affected most of our industrial arts have so far had little influence upon the porcelain manufactured by the large Staffordshire firms. Here and there, as by Mr. Bernard Moore of Longton, an attempt has been made to take up the problem of the flambé glazes, which has so fascinated the French potters. Mr. Moore has succeeded in making some sang de bœuf vases which in outline and colour closely follow the Chinese models. Otherwise the many skilful artists—more than one of them, I think, are Frenchmen—employed by our porcelain manufacturers have been content to follow in the main the old traditions, nor has any occasional attempt that has been made to imitate, not the latest but rather the work of the last generation at Sèvres, produced any very satisfactory results. It cannot be denied that both in the design and in the decoration our English porcelain has, for some time, remained outside the art movement of the day.
Indeed at the present time, and for the last twenty years, whatever of interest we can find in the contemporary production of porcelain, centres in two factories—Sèvres and Copenhagen. To the latter works we must now return for a moment.
The royal factory, of which we have already spoken, was closed after the disastrous war of 1864. But during the eighties a number of able men, both artists and men of science, occupied themselves with the new porcelain problems, and in 1888 a fresh company was formed, the ‘Alumina.’ These men—I will only mention Philip Schou—were much impressed by the technical and artistic merits of the porcelain lately sent from Japan, highly finished ware decorated under the glaze with great delicacy and generally in subdued colours. They were influenced above all by the work of the Japanese potter Miyagawa Kozan, called Makudzo. The Danish porcelain produced during the nineties is distinguished as a whole by its cool, subdued colours, with a prevalence of various pearly tints approaching more or less to celadon. In the carefully executed but boldly designed decoration, we see the influence both of the Japanese naturalists and of the impressionist painters of the day. The snow scenes, the rocks, the dancing waves and the sea birds have been suggested by the stormy coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea. It is from the primitive rocks of this coast that the pure felspar, which plays so large a part both in the paste and in the glaze, has been obtained.
It was at Copenhagen probably that the crystalline glazes, derived from salts of bismuth, were first made—this was by Engelhart, about 1884.
At a rival Danish factory—that of Bing and Gröndhal—many clever artists, some of them ladies, have modelled in porcelain figures of animals either in the round or in relief on the sides of vases: we find dogs, cats, and even seals (but not the human figure). Indeed in this kind of work something in the nature of a school has grown up.
Fresh life has lately been given to the old works at Rörstrand, near Stockholm. Here in the underglaze decoration the same cool, pearly colours that we find in favour at Copenhagen are predominant. Great care has lately been devoted to the modelling of flowers.
At the Rozenburg works, near the Hague, a new paste has been invented by Juriann Kok. The extraordinary tenacity and plasticity of this material allows of its being worked into the strangest forms—some of the vases, with long, thin, angular handles, suggest work in hammered metal. By means of a fantastic decoration—quaint, elongated figures, and forms of marine life, such as the long-clawed Japanese lobster—a certain original cachet has been given to this ware.
The Charlottenburg works, near Berlin, have lately felt the influence both of Copenhagen and of the new school of Sèvres. Everything has been lately tried—sculpturesque developments in various directions, and again the decoration of large wall surfaces with porcelain plaques enamelled so as to resemble oil pictures; but as in former days, so now, the technical and scientific side of this industry tends to prevail over the artistic.
M. Édouard Garnier, the late director of the Museum at Sèvres, in a report upon the porcelain exhibited at Paris in 1900, has ably summed up his impressions of the wares now being manufactured in various parts of Europe, and I cannot do better than follow so excellent an authority in his ‘appreciations’ of this modern porcelain.