Raoul Lachenal

While some of Raoul Lachenal's Art Nouveau ceramics resemble pieces by his father, he also produced distinctive stoneware that can hold its own against works by master glaze artists like Ernest Chaplet and Albert Dammouse.

Period photographs show pieces with organic body forms, looping handles, and incised decoration similar to Edmond Lachenal's work from around 1900.

What really brings this piece to life, though, is its thickly applied high-temperature glaze, whose palette of purple hues is as varied as the subtle shifts in depth across the body's surface.

Thanks to unexpected juxtapositions of matte and glossy areas, the vertically arranged feathers border on abstraction and yield a complex figure and ground relationship between the motif and the surrounding space.

These three vases refute traditional accounts of Raoul Lachenal's Art Nouveau ceramics as undifferentiated restatements of his father's style from the same period.