Atelier of Edouard Gille

Edouard Gille owned and operated his own atelier during the years of 1868-1883.  He was one of a few who fabricated, designed and painted French barbotine in gros relief (large or high relief), particularly floral and foliate relief in the Impressionist style.  The forms and their decoration are of an extreme variety.  The time and work to finish one realistic flower, let alone several, was arduous ,painstaking, and required extremely fine artistic talent.  The Kaolin clay was manipulated to a paper thin fineness, formed into layers of floral petals and leaves, colored and sometimes fired before applying more colors, applied to the vessel , glazed and fired.  If not fired correctly, the entire piece could be ruined and the process would have to start over.

This beautiful and rare jardiniere or cachepot by Edouard Gille has ground colors of creams to pale greens fading into a dark green/black. The high relief flowers are depicted in stages from buds to completely open flowers, almost past their prime—a technique extremely difficult to accomplish with wet clay.  There are bronze mounts at the top, bottom and sides have bronze drop handles.
Gros relief floral barbotine by Edouard Gille is rare due to the fact that his period of production was only  15 years , so not as many pieces were produced by his atelier.  This beautiful jardinière or cachepot will be a wonderful addition to any collection.

Condition:  Bronze has minor oxidation; minor glaze ageing.