GRAND FEU CERAMICS* 
I write these articles ivith the view of being useful to isolated artists fond of the arts of the fire, and to render homao-e to 
the glory of the Manufactory of Sevres, to which / have belonged for the last 26 years. To Sevres and to my comrades I owe all 
my technical skill and the greatest part of my art. The decorative compositions tvhich f have executed there exceed three thousand 
and are dispersed in private collections and museums. I have refused many brilliant offers from foreign factories, but as f tvas 
unable to resist the passion of the ceramist and as a ceramist does not exist ivithout his kiln any more than a violinist tvithout his 
violin, I have established in my residence a laboratory of experiments ivliere / conquer from the fire the ceramics zvhich have 
brought me a gratifying success. TAXILE DO A T 
I. THE CERAMIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE IN 1900 
URING the past century the Man- 
ufactory of Sevres has been the 
promoter or at least the most power- 
ful factor of all ceramic evolutions. 
Since its creation it has been in 
France the radiant sun toward which 
the workers in clay have turned 
their eyes, whether as industrials 
they wanted to decipher the secret 
formulae of the laboratory, or as 
artists they sought inspiration in the works loved by the kings, 
great dispensers of vogue and propagators of fashion. 
In Europe, after coming to the front with its precious 
pate tendre, supplanting Meissen in the hard porcelain and 
the painting of polychrome flowers, creating the charming 
works which are called biscuit, a creation which resulted from 
the failure to glaze the statuettes, as was done at Dresden, 
and after undertaking the execution of monumental vases, it 
gloriously kept at the head of the movement with its marvel- 
ous reproductions of paintings. A decorative mistake of 
course, which delayed the coming of the grand feux, but in- 
creased its renown and saved it from political tempests. 
Sevres delighted in this glorious mistake until it received 
in 1847 from Father Ly some of the productions of the Far 
East. Then cultivated minds understood that there was 
something else to do than transmitting to posterity, on inde- 
structible material, a marvelous but unfaithful reproduction 
of the perishable works of painting. Sevi-es. Hard porcelain, date i860. Pates of application by Mr. Gely. Small piece. 
Ebelmen by breaking some Chinese 
pieces, understood the different stages of 
their fabrication, and experiments crowned 
with success gradually brought about a 
revolution, which is now complete, in the 
processes of decoration of hard porcelain. 
The evolution had been slow but was not 
to stop any more. 
In 185 1 Sevres sent to the London 
Exposition the result of its researches, a 
series of cups and saucers decorated like 
some Chinese pieces, over the clay, before 
glazing, and like them covered with white 
or colored glazes. As to colored glazes, 
they were inferior to the exotic models, 
but they had the advantage of possessing 
more varied and richer colors, and under 
the feldspathic enamel they were pro- 
tected from all alterations. Regnault and 
Salvetat, their inventors, called them pates 
p 
ir'..- --* . --*^ ■ ^^ 
IP 
wA 
1 
''>M^^H 
Sevres. Hard porcelain, date 1884. Small Jewel box, enamel decoration by Mr. Paillet. Belongs to the Sevres 
Musevim. A replica of this box wa,s presented to Mrs. Miolan Carvalho on her farewell performance of 
Marguerite in Faust. 
The three first articles will be general 
comments oh the ceramic movement as shown by the Paris Exposition of 1900, and on the organization and the products of the Manufactory of Sevres. 
The other articles will be technical. We will use some of the French terms when the translation into English does not seem to us to give the exact 
meaning of the term, for instance, "grand feu" for specially hard fire, the word applying to much higher temperatures than are given to ordinary 
porcelain and stoneware; also " gres " f or the new stoneware product fired at grand feu temperatxires ; " tlamme " for wares subjected to the flame 
in the kiln, etc.— (Ed.) 
* We begin in this issue the series of articles by Mr. Taxile Doat, which we announced some time ago. The three first articles will be gen 
nments on the ceramic movement as shown by the Paris Exposition of 1900, and on the organization and the products of the Manufactory of Sev 
