Jean Pointu
Large vase in stoneware with polychrome enamel drips on a beige background – French Ceramic
Jean Pointu
Stoneware vase with polychrome enamel drips on a beige background
Date : c. 1910
Dimensions : H : 31 cm
place of production: Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye ( France)
Material : Stoneware with polychrome glaze
Condition : Signed under the base, marked 144 incised underneath the base
References : Petit Palais, Paris ; Musée d'Orsay ; Musée de Sèvres
Conditions & disponibilité: Available
1 050 €
Description
of work
Stoneware vase with polychrome enamel drips on a beige background
This large ovoid vase, signed by Jean Pointu, is a remarkable example of French ceramic art, reflecting the influence of the Carriès school in late 19th century French ceramics. Crafted in glazed stoneware, the piece features a sand-colored background intentionally left exposed — a bold aesthetic choice that enhances the cascading flows of polychrome glaze. Rendered in nuanced tones of green, brown, grey, and blue, the glazes create an effect that is at once organic, spontaneous, and masterfully controlled.
This French ceramic piece stands out not only for its striking studio pottery technique but also for its conceptual depth. While the Carriès school typically favored full glaze coverage, Pointu’s decision to reveal parts of the raw terracotta introduces a powerful contrast between unadorned clay and glossy enamel. This artistic dialogue between materiality and finish deepens the visual experience and situates the vase as a distinctive work of 19th century French art pottery.
Jean Pointu holds a prominent place in the history of French ceramics, particularly within the renowned pottery tradition of Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye, located in the Nièvre region. This village has been a center for stoneware pottery since the 14th century and gained widespread recognition in the 18th century for the exceptional quality of its clay. However, it was in the 19th century that Saint-Amand truly flourished, notably under the influence of artists like Jean Carriès — a sculptor fascinated by Japanese ceramics, who chose to dedicate himself to high-fired stoneware and settle there.
Jean Pointu is a key figure in this artistic lineage of French studio pottery. His workshop is distinguished by its meticulous selection of clay and its pursuit of technical excellence. While other members of the Carriès school often embraced spontaneity and unpredictability in their creative process, Pointu favored a more rigorous and controlled approach, emphasizing precision and material mastery.
The stoneware produced in Jean Pointu’s atelier is celebrated for its durability and natural impermeability, even when left unglazed. This is due to the vitrification of high-silica clay fired at very high temperatures — a technique inspired by Song dynasty Chinese celadon wares, which had a profound influence on Japanese ceramic traditions, particularly through the aesthetics of the tea ceremony.
By merging historical techniques with a refined personal vision, Jean Pointu’s contributions have solidified his place in the canon of 19th century French ceramics and art pottery.
"To appreciate a fine piece of pottery as a true connoisseur—to savor its blend of barbaric rawness and refined elegance, and, while delighting the eye, to let a voluptuous hand glide over the gently warming surface of the clay: this is a pleasure few people think to seek out." - William Lee
Jean Pointu
Condat (France) 1843 - Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye (France) 1925
Jean-Marie Pointu (1843–1925) was a key figure in the rise of French ceramic art at the turn of the 20th century. His innovative work in the field of Japonist stoneware marked a clear departure from the academic traditions of his time, helping to open new artistic horizons in the world of ceramics.
Born in 1843 in the Puy-de-Dôme region, Jean Pointu trained in ceramics in Nevers before settling independently in Fontainebleau in 1879, where he acquired a commercial pottery workshop. There, he produced vases inspired by the barbotine wares of Montigny-sur-Loing. It was not until 1906, at the age of 63, that he chose to settle in Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye—drawn by the flourishing artistic atmosphere that had developed there since Jean Carriès had established himself in the village and inspired many potters to follow in his footsteps.
Initially a tenant of the workshop founded in 1904 by Lucien Brisdoux—an early collaborator—Pointu soon opened his own studio. He employed skilled turners, handle-makers, and workers who had previously worked with the artists of the Carriès school and were thus attuned to their demanding standards.
Pointu’s work is characterized by a meticulous selection of the whitest clays, a strong desire for control over the final result (in contrast to the Carriès school’s embrace of unpredictability), and the use of satin glazes that initially blended harmoniously, later evolving into brighter and more matte tones—an aesthetic further developed by his son, Léon Pointu, who worked alongside him and would eventually take over the studio. It was Léon who organized several retrospective exhibitions of his father’s work in Paris during the 1910s and 1920s, which met with considerable success.
Jean Pointu exhibited at the Salon d’Automne and the Société des Artistes Français during the 1910s, and his work was shown at the Musée Galliera in 1911. A retrospective dedicated to his oeuvre was presented at the 1928 Salon, organized by his son.
In the late 1910s, Jean Pointu gradually handed over responsibility for the workshop to Léon, who fully succeeded him upon his retirement in 1921, four years before his death in 1925.
Jean Pointu emerged on the artistic scene at a time when the influence of Japanese art—particularly through the World’s Fairs—was beginning to make its mark across Europe. It was within this climate of cultural and aesthetic upheaval that he developed a deep interest in stoneware, a material that had long been associated with traditional rural pottery in France.
Jean Pointu’s work is distinguished by a continuous pursuit of harmony between everyday life and artistic expression, inspired by the principles of chadō, the Japanese tea ceremony. His style is marked by exceptional technical mastery and a bold use of glazes and flowing drips, giving his creations an aesthetic that is both simple and sophisticated.
The Pointu workshop, founded in Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye in 1906, quickly became a center of innovation in the field of French ceramics. Working alongside his son Léon, Jean Pointu developed a unique artistic approach—blending traditional stoneware techniques with Japanese influences and a distinctly modern sensibility.
the work
in its context
Jean Pointu’s ceramics are part of the Carriès school, which developed in the wake of Jean Carriès’s move to Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye—a historic center for stoneware production dating back to the Middle Ages.
The school’s founder, Jean Carriès (1855–1894), had chosen the village for the exceptional quality of its clay and the skill of its potters, from whom he learned the craft of stoneware. A gifted sculptor and renowned portraitist who had risen to prominence in the Paris art scene of the 1870s and 1880s, Carriès made a radical turn in his career in 1878 after visiting the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Having attended a Japanese tea ceremony and been profoundly moved by the beauty, purity, and spiritual depth of Japanese stoneware utensils, he decided to abandon sculpture—despite his success—and devote his life to stoneware, which he famously described as the ‘masculine counterpart of porcelain.’
The presentation of Japanese collections at the 1878 Paris World’s Fair—such as the one assembled by Émile Guimet—played a major role in the dissemination of Japanese aesthetics within French art, especially in the decorative arts and ceramics.
Codified in the 16th century by Sen no Rikyu, the Japanese tea ceremony embodies the essence of a ritualized aesthetic pursuit of perfection. This refined tradition, deeply connected to nature and the acceptance of its role in artistic creation, fascinated late 19th-century artists. The tea ceremony’s principles—simplicity, harmony, and impermanence—resonated particularly with the emerging aesthetics of Symbolism and the wabi-sabi philosophy.
French ceramicist Jean Carriès incorporated Symbolist references to nature in his fantastical stoneware bestiary, while Jean Pointu explored the evocative power of layered matte glazes, notably developing a soft and nuanced hare’s fur glaze inspired by Japanese ceramics. Techniques such as the use of gold accents, flowing glazes, and matte finishes played a key role in shaping both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements in decorative arts.
Beyond materials and motifs, Japanese influence was instrumental in the rise of the artist-craftsman ideal and the concept of a total work of art, both of which emerged around the turn of the 20th century and deeply impacted Western decorative arts.
sources
P. Monjaret & M. Ducret, L’école de Carriès, l’art céramique à Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye 1888-1940, Paris, Les éditions de l’amateur, 1997
http://www.grespuisaye.fr/index.html
- Vase en grès émaillé doré – Jean Pointu, Musée d’Orsay – Paris voir l’oeuvre
- Pichet à anse – Jean Pointu, Petit Palais – Paris voir l’oeuvre