- Title
- Bottle
- Date Made
- circa 1640
- Medium
- Earthenware with tin glaze and enamel (grande feu faience)
- Dimensions
- Diameter (Diameter): 7 1/2 in.
Height: 15 1/8 in. (38.42 cm)
15 1/8 × 7 1/2 in. (38.42 × 19.05 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2012.12
- Collecting Area
- Decorative Arts and Design
- Curatorial Notes
In the 1630s, Chinese porcelain arrived in France as gifts from the Dutch East India Company to Marie de Médicis, the mother of King Louis XIII. Within a decade, the influence of Chinese ceramic shapes and decoration had reached Nevers, one of France’s oldest producers of ceramics and, by then, its main center of pottery production. The shape of this earthenware vase with a bulbous base and tall, slender neck ultimately derives from Islamic ceramics, which influenced Chinese designs that in turn inspired European ceramics. In Europe, the same shape also appeared soon after in glass produced in Venice, a major center of trade with West Asia. The blue-and-white decoration of birds and flowers on this vase is indebted to Chinese porcelain, by way of Iznik wares from Turkey. The dark blue glaze color, first developed in China and West Asia, became a specialty of Nevers. The distinctive decoration of white on a dark blue background was a technique that Italian potters had brought with them to Nevers. As a hybrid of Islamic, Chinese, and Italian ceramic traditions, this elegant French vase embodies global crosscurrents of artists, objects, materials, and artistic techniques that first emerged in the seventeenth century.
- Selected Bibliography
- Williams, Elizabeth A. Daily Pleasures: French Ceramics from the MaryLou Boone Collection. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2012.
