Th[acute{e}]odore Deck French potter

Magazine Antiques, July, 2000 by Bernard Bumpus

Louis March Solon (1835-1913), the celebrated p[hat{a}]te-sur-p[hat{a}]te ceramist, described Joseph Th[acute{e}]odore Deck as "the greatest of all French potters." [1] It was a remarkable tribute from the son-in-law of yet another great French potter, L[acute{e}]on Arnoux (1816-1902). Nor was Solon alone in his opinion of Deck, as many contemporary tributes bear out.

Deck's beginnings were humble. He was born in 1823 in the small town of Guebwiller in Alsace, where his father was a silk dyer. Affluent relatives paid for his education at La Chapelle-sous-Rougement where his ability at chemistry was soon noted. However, when he was seventeen his father died and he was recalled to Guebwiller to take over the family business. This was not a success, perhaps because he already hankered after an artistic career. He considered the possibility of studying under the Strasbourg sculptor Andr[acute{e}] Friedrich (1798-1877), but this proved to be too expensive. Instead, he apprenticed himself to the leading stove maker in the city, P[grave{e}]re H[ddot{u}]gelin, and in his spare time he obtained some instruction from Friedrich and pondered ways to make stoves "more artistic." [2]

After his apprenticeship Deck was faced with the unalluring prospect of military service, and instead he set out on foot for Central Europe, paying his way by working on stoves and studying local techniques for making them. He soon acquired a reputation for his artistry, and in Vienna, where he stayed for eighteen months, he was invited to make several large stoves in the Louis XV style for the imperial palace, Schloss Sch[ddot{o}]nbrunn. He then resumed his travels, going as far east as Prague, before returning to France, arriving in Paris in December 1847. On the recommendation of H[ddot{u}]gelin he was taken on by the stove maker Madame Vogt. The job was cut short by the Revolution of 1848, which broke out in February, closing her establishment and many others. Deck, now without money, applied to the National Workshops that were set up by the provisional government to create public works projects for the many unemployed. The workshops were organized on military lines into squads of eleven men, and Deck wa s elected a squad leader. However, the workshops were dissolved after the riots in June 1848, known as the journ[acute{e}]es de juin (June days). Deck then escaped from Paris by joining a detachment of the National Guard, which was returning to Lorraine. Deck himself traveled on to Guebwiller, where he set up a small pottery in which he made sculptural works, such as the memorial medallion shown in Plate II and, inevitably, stoves. Only fragments of these stoves survive, including the tile in Plate I, from a stove he made for a doctor's house in Guebwiller, as the decorative caduceus indicates.

In December 1851 Deck was invited back to Paris to work in a new stove manufactory run by Madame Dumas, a daughter of Madame Vogt. He became the foreman of the establishment and did so well for her that she was awarded a medal at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Deck was so impressed with the display of English ceramics there [3] that he conceived the idea of opening a pottery to make artistic wares that would compete with them. He did not say which of the English ceramics most impressed him, but it seems probable it was the majolica, a line that had been introduced a few years earlier by the French art director of Minton's, L[acute{e}]on Arnoux.

Deck left Madame Dumas and with the help of his brother Xavier (1828-1901) set up a small atelier in 1856 on the Boulevard Saint-Jacques. According to Solon, the meager facilities consisted of "a potter's wheel, a few tables and benches, and two small kilns." [4] One of the first objects Deck made was a beer pot, decorated in 1856 with a winter scene by the artist Henri Joseph Harpignies (1819-1916). [5] In a memorandum Deck also mentioned commissions from Eug[grave{e}]ne Rousseau (1827-1891) for his shop in rue Coquilli[grave{e}]re, [6] and from the bronze founder Victor Paillard. He also provided designs and models for several Parisian stove makers. One of the techniques Deck adopted at this time was based on so-called Saint-Porchaire, or Henri II wares. It consisted of delicately inlaying colored clays into white bodied pottery. Deck's wares in this technique were skillfully made but also very expensive and, according to his brother Xavier, "rather dull." [7]

In 1858 the work was sufficiently profitable for the Deck pottery to be formally established, and it is this date that appeared as the founding date on subsequent letterheads. In this year too Deck saw an exhibition of what were then called "Persian" wares at the Mus[acute{e}]e de Cluny. The glowing colors of these wares (actually Iznik wares from Turkey) so struck Deck that he decided to reproduce them. In 1859 he was able to obtain a broken Iznik tile, and after much analysis of the fragments he produced several comparable glazes, one of which, a darkish turquoise, became famous as bleu Deck (see P1. Ill).