The Eidelberg Collection at the Saint Louis Art Museum
European art pottery around 1900 was a profoundly experimental andinternational movement. This handsome volume, published in conjunctionwith a major gift to the Saint Louis Art Museum, traces the movement’sdevelopment through more than 150 works by both celebrated and forgottenmakers, offering a rare and nuanced view of modern ceramics across sixregions – France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Austria and Italy.This richly illustrated catalogue, edited by David Conradsen, celebrates amajor gift of more than 150 examples of European art pottery donated to theSaint Louis Art Museum by the scholar and collector Dr. Martin Eidelberg.Made across continental Europe between about 1880 and 1930, these worksdemonstrate the extraordinary variety of form, surface, and ornament realisedover a fifty-year span. Many date from around the turn of the twentiethcentury and reveal how artists, designers, and manufacturers responded tothe so-called ‘Cult of Nature’, filtered through personal expression, technicalexperimentation, and the emergence of modernist design ideals.Strongest in works by French makers – reflecting the origins of themovement in France in the 1870s – the catalogue includes ceramics by wellknownfigures such as Ernest Chaplet, Émile Decoeur, and Pierre-AdrienDalpayrat, alongside works by many lesser-known or rarely collected artists.These include Atelier Glatigny, ‘Robalbhen’, and Nils de Barck, amongnumerous others, offering a broader and more nuanced picture of themovement than is typically available in American museum collections.The book opens with an introductory essay situating European art potterywithin its historical and artistic context. Short essays, co-authored by Eidelbergand the scholar Jonathan Clancy, introduce each geographical section byexamining pottery production in specific regions around 1900. Individualworks are catalogued by Conradsen and expanded upon with entries byEidelberg. Fully illustrated throughout, the volume also includes a ceramicmarks reference section and a selected bibliography.
