Dish in enamelled earthenware with polychrome decoration of Ottoman inspiration. On a slightly bluish and crackled white background, a decoration of tulips, saz palms, and carnations unfolds, borrowed from the repertoire of Iznik earthenware. The palette, dominated by blues, turquoise, green, and red, is characteristic of this style.
An old earthenware tile with a very similar decoration is reproduced by Rodolphe Pfnor in his Ornementation usuelle de toutes les époques dans les arts industriels et en architecture (1866-1867, vol. I). It is described there as belonging to the "collection of M. Jean, painter-ceramist," testifying to Auguste Jean's interest in the arts of the Near and Middle East. However, the artist does not merely faithfully reproduce the model: he transposes the decoration from a tile to a dish, simplifies its composition, and adapts its scale to suit this new medium.
This work reveals an unknown facet of the artist's production. Far from his famous neo-Renaissance inspired blue-ground earthenware, it illustrates his interest in orientalism, to which many French ceramists were then drawn. Like Théodore Deck or Eugène Collinot, Auguste Jean thus participates in the eclectic movement that revitalized French artistic earthenware in the second half of the 19th century, while offering here a personal interpretation of the Iznik decorative repertoire.
