RERAMIC STUDIO 
Copenhagen. Hard porcelain. Grand feu underglaze decorat: 
chemist Peyrusson showed a palette of grand feu colors under 
the glaze of hard porcelain, a palette which I had used since 
1875, before I entered Sevres, in the pates of application 
which I was dispersing among collectors. 
From that time, we see in France a bitter but stimu- 
lating fight between the partisans of the grand feu porce- 
lains and the friends of painting over porcelain and of faience. 
Toward the end of the Empire, Ch. Haviland entered 
the fight by establishing at Auteuil, near Paris, a laboratory of 
experiments. A group composed of the artists Aube, Chap- 
let, Ringel, Dammouse and of the chemist de Rabot formed 
around the master engraver Bracquemond. This group, not 
satisfied with the decoration of hard porcelain or conscious of 
its difficulties, introduced the artistic gres (stoneware). But 
this new product did not meet with favor from the public, 
and the Auteuil laboratory was dispersed, after leaving a pro- 
found mark of its passage. 
A commercial fact, insignificant by itself, awoke at that 
time the curiosity of collectors and the attention of artists. 
This fact was the continuous introduction in France, under 
the initiative of Mr. Bing, of those marvelous Chinese cera- 
mics, enriched with brilliant glazes, of those vases without any 
other decoration than a general tone of color and with a 
beauty of glaze, that dominant quality of ceramics, which re- 
minded one of the glassy old porcelaine tendre of Sevres and 
had besides the penetrating charm of the delicate tones of the 
celadons of iron in imitation of jades, or the vivid effects of 
the flammes of red of copper. 
The curiosity of the students 
and of the public was also excited 
by their suggestive and bizarre 
names: mule liver, horse lungs, 
powdered tea leaf, orange skin, iron 
rust, etc. 
Chaplet, after the closing of the 
Auteuil laboratory, had constructed 
a kiln for the fabrication of gres, but 
carried away by the vogue of the 
flamm^ reds and wishing to devote 
himself entirely to his new work, he 
sold the gres establishment to Mr. 
Delaherche who settled in that ready 
nest. 
Deck and the Sevres laboratory, 
working on the same lines as Chap- 
let, drew from iheir kilns a few beau- 
tiful pieces at a great expense, but 
it was only in 1884, after the 
scientific regulation of reducing 
fires by Mr. Lauth, administra- 
tor of Sevres, that the public was 
able to enjoy this new discovery 
in an imposing display of the most 
gorgeous flammes. 
And at the same Exposition, 
a neighboring case contained the 
first white crystallization, the re- 
sult of new experiments on glazes, 
especially on zinc glazes, which 
was going to be the point of de- 
parture of this rain of gems called 
crystalline glazes. 
These new discoveries were 
rapidly bringing about the neg- 
lect of porcelain painting and the adoption of grands feux, 
when the Danish artists made their sensational appearance at 
the Exposition of 1889. 
The Copenhagen chemists who had kept themselves 
posted on the experiments of Salvetat, Lauth and Peyrusson, 
and had known the works of Sevres in 1884, exhibited at the 
Exposition Universelle a series of dishes and vases, decorated 
with grand feu colors under the glaze, which had a brilliancy 
and an appearance of easy execution unknown to pates of 
application. Their success was so much the more marked 
from the fact that the enemies of Sevres took the part of Mr. 
Lauth, who, on account of difficulties with his personnel, had 
resigned his position, against Mr. Deck, who had replaced 
him, in a systematic disparagement of the factory. 
However, the success of Copenhagen had not prevented 
the triumph of the beautiful flammes which Chaplet was dis- 
persing among the public, nor of the clever grand feu palettes 
of Peyrusson and Giraud-Demay, nor of the series of my pates 
of application, a specimen of which had been acquired in 1882 
by the Commission of Beaux Arts for the Musee du Luxem- 
bourg and was the nucleus of that section of fine arts which 
has so wonderfully developed since. 
This conquest of the Luxembourg by an object of art 
and the judicious distribution of honorific awards had stimu- 
lated the artistic world, when in 1892, at the Salon of the 
Societe Nationale, Carries, a genial sculptor, friend of Chaplet, 
without any help from chemists and without financial re- 
Copenhagen. Hard porcelain, grand feix underglaze decoration. 
Seagull listening, meiiam size plate, Tasile Doat Collection. Medium size plate, decoration executed with the American 
apparatus called aerograph. 
