Change of name

Just popped in to let you know that due to a possible copyright conflict over the name of the blog (formerly QCI Blog, latterly Collecting Quimper) the blog has been renamed love quimper?
Only the name has changed, the content remains the same and will still provide a "one of a kind" resource for all lovers of french pottery.
Quimper Club news: In the upcoming issue of Le Journal, the club's newsletter, lovers of Malicorne faience will find much of interest!

Here's a Malicorne mosiac that I created to whet your appetite.

May I take this opportunity to wish all our followers a Happy Easter 

and say a big thank you for your continued support.

Barnyard Bash ~ French Style by Sarah

Paper Maché Figures from French Artist, Aude Goalet

Welcome to the French countryside for the First Barnyard Bash hosted by Happier Than a Pig in Mud.

~ Barnyard Bash French Style ~

8.5" Unmarked Manor House Plate

It's early morning at le mas, a typical french farm house.

8.75" Unmarked Soleil Plate

Le soleil rises over the hillside and . . .

11.5" HB Quimper Charger

The sound of Le coq is heard as he announces a beautiful new day at le ferme.

HB-Henriot Hen on Nest

Séance de poule is on her nest ready to provide fresh eggs for the day.

7.75" Unmarked Deep Dish Plate

One can hear the swishing sound of birds as they fly above the nearby pond, the elegant cygne noir gracefully glides across the still water.

Pair of Figurals Marked Rouen Decor Fait Main

Young Juliet and Jean Pierre are up early for their morning chores before they head off to school.

12" Malicorne Charger, Pre-Lawsuit Mark of Reversed P & B

Monsieur looks across his land with great pride as another day dawns.

Pig Bank Marked HB Quimper

Le porc can be heard snorting about the barnyard.

8.25" Plate Marked HB Quimper

While the spat of deux coqs echos through the barnyard.

Horse Figural Marked Rouen Decor Fait Main

Frisky chevaux gallop across the pasture in the morning dew.

Unmarked Desvres 3-Sided Tea Caddy

All is right in the world on this fine day.

Oil and Vinegar Server, First Mark Porquier-Beau

There is much work to be done in the fields and vegetables to be gathered from the garden.

Goat Figural Double Salt Marked Gaetan Level

La chevre helps carry the load from the fields back to the barn.

10.75" Malicorne Charger Marked PBx

There is the walk into the village for the morning market to sell some chickens and fresh eggs.

Unmarked Desvres 3-Sided Tea Caddy

And many chores for the lady of the house before days end.

Reverse Side of Oil and Vinegar Server, First Mark Porquier-Beau

Fresh water for cooking and washing is gathered from the well as Monsieur heads to the house at day's end.

Cat Figural Marked AG

Of course every ferme has un chat.

HR Quimper Jardiniere

And at the end of the week there is much singing and dancing to celebrate with a

A Barnyard Bash ~ French Style

9.5" Malicorne Plate Marked PBx

So grab a partner and dance yourself right over to Happier Than a Pig in Mud, our hostess for the First Annual Barnyard Bash. Also you are invited to join me at Hyacinths for the Soul for a Barnyard Bash ~ English Style. Hope to see you there!

Also linking this post to Laurie's A Few of My Farorite Things Saturday @ Bargain Hunting and Chatting with Laurie. Click here to see others sharing favorite things this Saturday.

Faïence Creatures Great and Small....We Collectors Love Them All.....by Cerélle

Faïence Creatures Great and Small....We Collectors Love Them All.....by Cerélle

Or so it seems, by the great variety of animals that one can find. All of the faïence centers seem to have made them - Quimper, Malicorne, Desvres, Moustiers, and others. Perhaps the makers liked them as much as we do.

First represented are the family pets, our beloved dogs and cats who enrich our lives.

They are found in figurine form as well as painted on plates and vases and little bells and other details such as the poignées on the lids of jars or tureens.

 

This little pitcher was made in Malicorne, and with his
soulful eyes and long ears, seems to me to be a spaniel.

Recently I purchased an early CA plate which really delights me. It shows a peddler selling puppies on the promenade alongside the Seine River in Paris. Behind him can be seen Notre Dame Cathedral, and the sky is dotted with those trademark fluffy white clouds.

He is holding the presumed mother of these pups, and one puppy is being held out while two others are seen peeking out of his pockets.

Oh, dear..I would have wanted ALL of them and the mother, too.

Of likely more recent production is a covered box with a happy reclining Golden Retriever on the lid. This is marked "Hand Painted in France for Tiffany and Co E III AP" This is reminiscent of pieces made for them in Quimper, but the decoration is more in the style of Desvres to my mind. Wherever it was produced, I find it quite charming.

Knowing our love for Poodles... you can imagine my joy at finding a Delft dog, which I believe to be a poodle. Certainly no other dog is shown with a pom-pom tail like this!

And I have a marvelous Malicorne plaque showing a lady holding a sock which her poodle thinks is for him. He isn't groomed "to show", but then neither is mine, and this would have been long ago too.

Look at the grooming, or lack thereof, in this marvelous old photograph of a poodle family. I like to consider it a photo of our Chouette's ancestors!

Next, there are the domesticated animals such as donkeys and goats, which seem to appear mostly as beasts of burden carrying a pair of baskets. These are salts, and this makes them doubly collectible. Both of the ones shown are from Desvres. These are Fourmaintraux Freres production and I am fond of the soft Manganese purple colors and their facial expressions.

Horses appear but not so often. These are candleholders, and as you can see I like to use a set that is not exactly matched, as I do for my dishes. These are HB Quimper and HB-Henriot.

And then, too, our little creatures "tuck in" most anywhere and always bring a smile.

There are many others to be found, pigs are especially popular, but whichever ones catch your eye, they are fun to search for and a joy to collect.

Bannette with a story.........by Cerelle B

Malicorne faïence has always been a favorite of mine. Just as Quimper has its own charm and individuality, so has Malicorne.
Malicorne, like Quimper, is a town of course, and in Malicorne there were numerous faïenceries starting from the mid 1700s.
The banette in this blog was made by the Pouplard-Béatrix liaison of Plat d'étain. The number of faïenceries has greatly declined, but there are still active ones there making beautiful things and there is a museum worthy of the trip for lovers of faïence.

Being a hopeful gardener, I have always liked bees. I love having them buzzing around the garden, knowing they are busy doing their pollinating jobs. For that reason, I feel protective of them and several times I have used a twig to fish an errant bee out of the birdbath before he drowns.
So it was with delight that recently I saw on sale a Malicorne banette featuring a scene with bees. Now this was a first for me! I am especially fond of the Pouplard painted Malicorne pieces, but never before had I seen anything like this.

PBx mark on the back of the banette.
It is a busy scene with seven people ranging in all ages. A younger man is showing an elder what is going on. Some of the people, including a young girl, are wielding strange instruments or tools of some sort.
My husband, Bill, who had helped his grandfather tend the beehives on the ranch, did not recognize the devices. He said that they had used smoke to calm or daze the bees when they would harvest the honey, but that these surely didn't look like smokers.
After much puzzling and conjecture, I searched the Web and who knew there would be so much on bee keeping?!
I came upon a site John's Beekeeping Notebook which had all kinds of information on bees, as well as other topics, and an address to contact.
I wrote to John and presented my questions about the scene. He kindly replied that it appeared the people were doing what was called "drumming" or "tanging" the bees.
I found this fascinating picture from a late 17th century Dutch book.
The object in the man's hand looks very much like the ones people are shown using on my banette.
The book stated that "Tanging was also a way for a beekeeper to alert other beekeepers that a claim was being made on a found swarm. Acquiring new bees by laying claim to a swarm was important, as it was routine at this time for beekeepers to asphyxiate their bees with fumes from burning sulphur in order to access the honeycomb safely.”
Oh dear! Poor hardworking bees!
This is evidently a very old technique to get a swarm of bees to stop flying and settle down. This is hardly ever used today, according to John, but getting a free swarm to settle into a skep (or skip, as the straw hives were called) was the primary way for a beekeeper to increase his number of hives.
He said, "Today, we raise queens when we want to increase our number of colonies."
Bill was amazed, and said that in his experience making all that noise would only anger the bees. However, he stated, they had been working with resident bees, not ones free and searching for a spot to settle and live.
John referred me to other sites. Beesource.com and Bee Lore.com
On Bee Source, there was an interesting discussion of drumming the bees and there were some great stories of firsthand experiences doing that.
So, it appears that they are not concerned that it will anger the bees. Surely the elder persons would not be so close, nor that young girl either, if that were so.

From my first view of it, I have loved the painting on this platter showing this unusual scene and all of the interested and involved people and now that I know what they are doing, it means so much more to me.

Millicent S. Mali and the Old Quimper Review.

When I first discovered Quimper faience at an auction in Normandy I knew nothing about the subject, just that I liked it!
Isn't that how most collections begin?
The first Quimper reference book that I purchased was "French Faience: Fantaisie Et Populaire of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" by Millicent S. Mali and I was reminded of this when a close friend, a relative Quimper newbie, recently asked me to recommend a book to help her with her fledgling collection.
For 15 years, Millicent also wrote and published the OLD QUIMPER REVIEW, a magazine highlighting faience factories, decors, traditions and locations in France.
For example in the July 1990 issue we learn about an important event that influenced the future of Quimper production: the appearance of the Breton man and woman and the representation of the drawings of Perrin and Lalaisse, on faience. The Grand Maison HB created a typically regional product which delighted the clientele.The patterns became very popular and were imitated by the Malicorne faienceries, among others.
I'm sure that the Q collectors amongst you will be able to tell which of the plates in my two mosaics are from the Grande Maison de la Hubaudiere and which one is Malicorne.

However, without advice from experts such as Milli how easy would it be to tell the difference, without checking the signature marks on the back?
As luck has it my friend is now also a member of the QCI and I was able to point her in the direction of the QCI's new Ning Network where she will be able to find information on purchasing back issues of the OQR.
Milli is making these available at a special price, but only for QCI members.

So, if being eligible to attend the Annual Meeting in Savannah later this year wasn't enough incentive to make you join QCI, this great offer from Milli should do the trick!

Q and A Friday

This week we have a question from Sarah about two lovely Malicorne (Leroy-Dubois) pieces.

She writes : I'm curious if this form has a specific name and also an explanation about the purpose of the single spout and shape, though I assume the shape is simple an artistic presentation if in fact these are meant for calvados. Of course one is in the shape of a pear. Is there a pear equivalent to calvados? The pear shape has a small hole at the top. I wonder if this is to help the flow. That is why I'm puzzled about this form. Does the liquid pour easily?

It seems odd to me that you should have to fill up the container through the spout ?

Can anyone help with some information ?

Sunday Favourites Rerun..........by Maggie B.

Chari @Happy to Design graciously offers us, each Sunday, the opportunity of reprising a blog written weeks, months or in some cases years ago. This allows new visitors to our blog to discover even more about the QCI.
Normandy Life has a faience themed blog about the King's Cake, "Galette des Rois" and feves today which is also linked to Chari's meme.

Here at QCI we are sharing a post entitled "A Secret Little Crush" written by Tricia, a member of the Club's web committee, which was first posted in March 2009.

Many thanks to all of you for your sweet comments regarding my last post. I plan to be in Dallas with bells on and hopefully Ben in tow! The little tidbits I've heard about the collections we will be visiting have me drooling and I can't wait to see all of the other wonderful QCI members again.

I told you all a little bit about why I like Quimper faience in my last post. The more that I learn about Bretagne, the more I appreciate how well the faience captures that spirit and Breton personality.

The way that the faienceries kept current with the modes of the time and also recognized the best artists that Bretagne had to offer in all mediums really impresses me. To think that they recognized the best sculptors and painters of the time and asked them to create new faience works really says a lot about the craft. Its just not something that you see on British transferware for example. And the pieces by the Porquier-Beau faiencerie are really outstanding, a class unto themselves.

But yet, despite all of that, I must admit that it is really the Malicorne pieces that get my heart aflutter. Now the purists will say that is scandalous, "They're forgeries after all!" and the more forgiving will call them copies but I think that one hundred years on we can appreciate them for their own artistic place in the world of French faience.

And the bit of legal history between Porquier-Beau and Pouplard-Beatrix just makes them all the more interesting.

There just is something about the deep red clay, crackled glaze and intense, matte colors thatreally speaks to me.

Somehow they seem more handcrafted, more organic than their more perfect upmarket cousins. My absolutely favorite stop at the 2007 QCI meeting was the collection that Alain Champion had arranged for us to see.

It was the cutest fairy tale home filled with some of the best Malicorne I have ever seen.

If like me, you have a little sweet spot for Malicorne, you will certainly enjoy Alain's book "Leon Pouplard, faiencier a Malicorne" and a must see is the Malicorne museum in the town of the same name.

My favorite piece is a plate that I bought in the South of France of all places, from a dealer who didn't quite know where the "tres belle" piece came from. The center of the plate is of a couple possibly in the beginning stages of a courtship.

He is holding her hand and gazing into her eyes, she is nervously twirling the tie on her apron. You wonder what she is thinking. Should I really let him hold my hand? Is he being sincere or is he just too suave? It seems as if she will blush at any moment. Or is he proposing and her heart is pounding with nervousness?

I admit, it was a piece that I truly hope wouldn't sell as I coveted it for my own collection.

Was it the most valuable piece I had, no, but it spoke to me. Really, isn't that the true essence of collecting?

Another thing that I love about faience in general is the various forms that it comes in. No settling for the flat surface of a plate for the French.

Several years ago, I purchased a sweet little Malicorne quintal vase from Judy Datesman that I hold ready for the season's first camellias.

On the walls of our living room, we have a collection of PBx plates with Breton figures and the lovely leaf and acorn border.

I enjoy comparing the figures to the engravings by Lalaisse trying to decide where they would have resided in Bretagne.

On our little writing desk, there is a beautiful double scallop shell server with a leaf handle from Formaintroux Freres in Desvres along with a recent Quimper lamp and inkwell (though my decorator would die if she knew I was showing you my temporary tiebacks on the drapes).

Faience will fit into any decor, even the most modern depending on the artist and era which you choose. Don't be afraid to mix things up a bit. If you love it, use it!

So, what is your favorite piece? the one you secretly love the most? How do you display your collection or use it in your everyday life?

A bientot,

Trisha