Besides numerous vases and bowls, simple and with no orna mentation other than the glaze, Carries created a great number of plastic works such as masks, heads, figures Of animals, etc., which please not only by their construction, their exquisite colour and beautiful surface, but also by their subtle characterization. His last work was a monumental hall which the Princess de Scey Montbeliard had made in her hotel in the Avenue St. Martin. But he did not live to see it completed. He was ill when the work be gan, and on July 1, 1894, he died. His friend, the architect G. Hoentschel, who made china after the same method as Carries, gave a large collection of the latter's work to Paris (Musee du Petit Palais). Another disciple was Paul Jeanneny (1861-192o), who took over Carries' atelier in St. Amand. Neither he nor Hoentschel has done any plastic work. Jeanneny's work is even more closely connected with Japanese ceramics than is the work of the others.
In the meantime Chaplet had started a school, and the most prominent of the artists, who with their master formed the group of "L'Art du Feu," was Auguste Delaherche, who, when Chaplet went to live at Choisy-le-Roi, took over his furnace at Vaugirard in 1887. At first he worked with streaming glazes, and sometimes combined these with designs in relief. But gradually he simplified his methods. In the museum at Sevres there is an early dish of his with a motif of oak leaves ; but his later work is remarkable only for the dull glow of his warm-coloured &nails, strong and deep, dark and velvety. Other disciples of Chaplet are : Adrien Dalpayrat, born at Limoges, who collaborated first with Voisin Delacroix and later with Mlle. Lesbros. His work can be recog nized by the deeply coloured blue, blood-red or yellow opaque glazing, reminiscent of oil painting. Technically his workshop was very highly developed ; sometimes he made vases several yards high in blue and red spotted gres.
Edmond Lachenal was much more under Japanese influence. For ornamentation, especially in his dull green glazed pots, he used naturalistic branches and flowers or blossoms, brought out in relief, and tinged with white or rose red. By giving his works an acid bath he succeeded in making the surface peculiarly velvety —email veloute. Albert Dammouse considered the material more, and his work at the Sevres factory has a character entirely its own. For the decorating of his rather simple forms he used plant motifs, and often those of mosses and seaweeds. In so-called
pate-decor, the glaze and the pate material are applied side by side or one over the other, as in enamel painting. Dammouse avoided bright colours and tried to get dark, deep harmonic tinges. In connection with this the Englishman Taxile Doat might also be mentioned. He worked at the Sevres factory and produced pate-decor Espeeially remarkable are his gres articles on the surface of which have been affixed small porcelain insets with heads of animals. Alexandre Bigot, who has carried out designs for Henri van der Velden, and J. C. and M. Cazin (father and son), attained fame with their richly coloured running-glazes. They are inferior, however, to some of the younger artists, who in closer association with Chaplet and Delaherche, raised, with the help of the latter, French gres to a height not reached by the older artists. First among these are Emile Lenoble and Emile Decoeur. Lenoble, Chaplet's son-in-law, not only took over Chaplet's furnaces, but also inherited his preference for gres. But his work is quite differ ent. Except in some of his Japanese-like products with a half coat ing of brown-black glaze, he specialized in engobes, in which he knew how to produce simple but very strong straight-lined orna ments by erasing. The colours of his engobes are of a blackish brown, grey, deep blue, green, orange-red, and white, and always of a quiet tone that harmonizes with the simplicity of the grey clay material. Decoeur is finer and more complicated with his dim, delicate glazes, occasionally bright, but generally dull, in which colour is more important than with Lenoble. Other orna ment is lacking in his work or is reduced to a minimum, such as a few simple lines, a small cufic motif in relief, or a margin of leaves reminiscent of Chinese celadons. His bowls and pots are covered with a soft brown-yellow, a delicate green or blue glaze, usually rather thick and applied in a somewhat streaming manner. For softness of surface, his work equals the very best old Chinese and Japanese wares. Raoul Lachenal, the son of Edmond Lachenal, follows after Decoeur, and sometimes his work is equally good. Henri Simmen does the same, but he often imitates Japanese ex amples too servilely. Jean Mayodon decorates his work with fig ures like those on antique and Persian examples; e.g., slender, leaping deer. Rene Buthaud has another technique—his decoration is of large flat human figures and a strong relief produced by deep incisions.