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Scalloped shells rise in high relief around the sauce well of this Sarreguemines majolica oyster plate. In 1812 the emperor Napoleon I commissioned vases from Sarreguemines, the storied French faience house. Read its story.
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Around the 1920s this plate left Sarreguemines, the Lorraine faience town Napoleon I once turned to for vases. Its design looks back to Art Nouveau and to the textures of the sea, turning the oyster course into a still life of the shore.
At heart it is French faience made for the pleasure of the table, finished in a glossy glaze. The house had made majolica for decades by then, with the Jester Jug among its earliest designs.
Golden Caramel is warm and sunlit, touched with brown and charcoal accents. Deep Mahogany turns the same forms to a dramatic umber with bolder contrasts. Each plate varies in colour as a trace of its handcrafted origin, so the one that reaches the table is entirely its own.
Sarreguemines was born in troubled times. A group of businessmen founded a faience factory in the town of Sarreguemines, and the young venture struggled through war, civil unrest and inflation in France. Then Paul Utzschneider, a Bavarian-born businessman from Strasbourg, took it over. He built it into a major firm.
As early as 1801 its wares were taking prizes at national exhibitions in France. In 1812 Napoleon I commissioned vases from the firm, and Utzschneider came to be called le Wedgwood français. The renowned house later added majolica, and its Jester Jug was one of its earliest majolica designs.
Its old works lives on in museums. At the Moulin de la Blies Museum of Faience Techniques, a reconstructed workshop looks as if the workers have just left. Its faience now brightens homes around the world, gathered by collectors who delight in French charm. They know each piece carries the art of a works once favored by an emperor.
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