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

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Although these Iznik designs remained in production for a long time, interest in them competed with taste for Oriental, specifically Japanese, wares which were imported in the 1860s. Many works in the donation can be described as 'Oriental', or at least inspired by oriental design, although motifs are often so mixed that it is difficult to be precise. Another of Deck's Alsatian friends, Emile Reiber, artist, collector, designer, publisher and art director of Christofle, the leading Parisian gold- and silversmiths, was an advocate of Japonisme, which was beginning to sweep Paris. Reiber worked for Deck in various capacities and designed large numbers of his vases, which were more generally inspired by Chinese, rather than Japanese, shapes. One example is the vase in Fig. 3, with its stylised elephant-head handles, unsigned, but almost certainly by Reiber, whose real contribution is coming to light. (13) The shape of a gourd-like vase (Fig. 7), designed with birds and foliage, is also likely to have been Reiber's. This example of eclectic Chinese-Japanese decoration in the gift is particularly interesting since it was reputedly owned by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, whose intention to set up an emporium for the sale of art pottery finally came to nothing. A second vase of this shape is finished with the plain dark-green glaze that Reiber favoured.

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Besides decorative objects, Deck ran a successful, and probably very profitable, line in architectural tiles and decorative panels. These were sold either individually or used in wall tiling, especially bathrooms. They usually depicted exotic watery landscapes, populated with colourful birds, and were often designed and painted by Edmond Lachenal. He took charge of Deck's decorating shop in 1870, but left ten years later to set up on his own. The Bloch-Angly gift adds two of his ornamental plaques with heads, as well as a small, blue-glazed cat modelled and signed by him. Other small-scale works include a group of gracefully draped female figures--so-called 'Tanagra' figures--that became popular around 1870 throughout the Hellenistic world following the excavation of similar figurines in Athens.

Deck produced sculptural works in any quantity only after 1870. At one time he had hoped to train as a sculptor, but could not afford the cost. What teaching he did acquire must have profited him, to judge by a few surviving early works in the Musee du Florival, a bust of Mozart and a model of Theseus slaying the Minotaur. The sculptor Joseph Cheret, who worked with Deck in the 1880s, developed this side of the output. A signed group in the Bloch-Angly gift representing two children holding baskets is an attractive example of his observational skills in modelling figures in movement. Also by Cheret is a curious art nouveau piece in celadon: a naked nymph lying in a water-lily leaf with two large dragonflies at her head. The pottery's seeming reluctance to adopt the fashionable new style may have been the main contributory cause of its decline by 1904.