Deck's 'artistic faience' at the Musee Du Florival; Marthe and Rene Bloch-Angly have recently presented a munificent gift of ceramics by Theodore Deck to the Musee du Florival in Deck's native town, Guebwiller. It covers almost the full range of his output, and includes some notable rarities

Apollo, June, 2005 by Bernard Bumpus

The works illustrated in this article are of faience and were made in the pottery of (Joseph-) Theodore Deck (1823-1891). They are in the collection of the Musee du Florival, Guebwiller. All photos: Henri Boll, Musee du Florival

When Theodore Deck died in 1891, he had long been regarded as the leading French ceramicist of his day. As Sevres' chief administrator, he was nationally celebrated for having revitalised and transformed the ceramic industry. (1) In 1858, in collaboration with his brother Xavier, he established a pottery in Paris to make 'artistic faience', a scheme by which he attracted a changing stable of notable artists, many with established reputations. Deck's name became associated with a series of bold technical experiments and innovations of great aesthetic beauty, to which the artists made their individual contribution. This creative crucible achieved such success that its productions were widely sought by museums and collectors. (2)

The world's largest public collection of these ceramics is in the Musee du Florival, in Deck's native town of Guebwiller, Alsace. (3) Two years ago its curator, Julien Schweizer, received a remarkable gift from Marthe Bloch-Angly (1930-2002) and her husband, Rene Bloch-Angly (b. 1928), of some 220 pieces. It augmented the museum's Deck collection to well over 500 works, presenting a more comprehensive view of the pottery's wide-ranging output from its early days to its closure in 1904. Plaques, bowls, vases, jardinieres, ornamented furniture and sculptural pieces, as well as a small selection of contemporary Deck look-alikes, reflect the Blochs' catholic taste. In 2004, which was also the twentieth anniversary of the museum's foundation, these pieces went on public display in a fine new installation. (4)

The driving force behind the gift was Madame Marthe Bloch-Angly, an enthusiastic collector. She discovered Deck's work in 1985 at the museum's inaugural exhibition, which explored his relationship with the Swiss artist Albert Anker. (5) Three years later she bought her first piece, a vase decorated with his glorious turquoise glaze, known as bleu Deck (Fig. 3). She subsequently added a variety of Deck's blue-glazed works, which were placed with the museum's holding to form an impressive display. In the 1990s her collecting gained focus, as she developed close links with the museum to ensure that her Deck purchases would enhance its holding and avoid duplication. It is a tribute to her energy and commitment that a collection of this quality was assembled in fourteen years.

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She and her husband consolidated their collaboration in another important way. The museum has no purchase grant, and funds for acquisitions have to be sought ad hoc, a time-consuming procedure, fraught with bureaucratic delays and an uncertain outcome. Over and above the new gift, the Blochs helped secure some fifty works, including major Deck ceramics such as Anker's two masterly portraits of a burgomaster and his wife, the earliest examples by this Swiss artist to enter the collection and his vivid likeness of Deck (Fig. 2), capturing the energy observed by contemporaries. (6) The original drawing for the plaque was donated by another patron, Madame Brefin-Urban. Also acquired by the Bloch-Anglys are a rare, signed example of Deck's own painted decoration (Fig. 6); a three-piece table decoration by the sculptor Joseph Cheret; and a copy of Deck's La Faience, ornamentally bound by Charles Meunier to incorporate panels of Deck ceramic. They loaned these key pieces to the museum until purchase funds became available to buy them. When Madame Bloch learned that she was terminally ill, she and her husband decided to donate their collection to the museum immediately. Thanks to their generosity, the museum has been able to build up its historic collection of Deck's work, and to give an unparalleled picture of his Paris practice.

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Almost a third of the Bloch-Angly Gift consists of plaques painted by artists, more than sixty of whom worked for Deck at one time or another. (7) Many had exhibited, at the Salon or elsewhere, and were well-known in their day. Among the first to join the pottery was the neo-Grec painter Victor Ranvier, who headed Deck's decorating shop in the 1860s. His plaque of a female bather (Fig. 5), one of six works by Ranvier in the gift, typifies his qualities of design and colour. It is clearly identifiable in an illustration of Deck's stand at the 'Union centrale' exhibition in Paris in 1865, where Ranvier was awarded a silver medal as 'one of the ablest of Deck's collaborators'. (8) Idyllic scenes such as this were also much admired by Leon Arnoux, the art director at Minton, who was no mean judge of ceramic art. (9)

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Better known contemporaries of Ranvier include the flower painter Eleonore Escallier and the Swiss artist Albert Anker. (10) Escallier worked with Deck throughout the 1860s, and her plaques with birds in the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle were some of her most accomplished work, fully meriting the jury's description as 'magnificent'. (11) One of them, featuring an exotic South American Quetzal, is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The rare signed piece in the Bloch-Angly Gift (Fig. 8) bears comparison. This superb plaque, sixty centimetres in diameter, is characteristically Japanese in inspiration, and is one of a series of sixteen or more that she painted in Paris in 1871, perhaps during the turmoil of the Commune. Anker joined Deck around 1867 and became one of his most sought-after portrait artists. Although no Anker works are included in their gift, the Blochs had already helped the museum, as mentioned, to buy several important pieces.