Flat openwork carafe

Bronze' stoneware by Jules Ziegler. Jules Ziegler, a pupil of Ingres and himself an acclaimed artist, was forced to give up painting by a serious eye disease in 1838. For five years he took up ceramics, before returning to painting and above all photography, becoming one of the latter’s pioneers. Moving to Voisinlieu, near Beauvais, he worked with one of the traditional materials of the ‘Pays de Bray’, stoneware. This ceramic is created by firing malleable clay with a high silica content at 1,300°C, which vitrifies and becomes impermeable. Using salt-glazing, Ziegler succeeded in unifying their colour and achieving a brilliant finish. Ziegler’s pieces can be seen as a development of the naturalistic vocabulary of the French Renaissance ceramicist Bernard Palissy, a tutelary figure for his 19th-century successors. They were made in a mould and not turned. In his workshop, described by his friend Théophile Gautier as a ‘mysterious sanctuary’, Ziegler concentrated his efforts on producing decorations and experimenting with new firing techniques and colour effects.