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William De Morgan, 1890

The robust, colorful vase with loop handles displayed in the Glessner House Parlor is the work of one of the late nineteenth century's most innovative ceramic artists, William Frend De Morgan (1839-1917). Born in London, young William was influenced by a lovely intellectual home environment. His father, Professor Augustus, Chair of Mathematics at University College in London, was also a philosopher and astronomer; his mother a suffragette and social reformer who worked to improve conditions in prisons and workhouses. De Morgan enrolled in art at the Academy Schools in 1859. In 1862, he met artist cum social reformer William Morris, beginning a critical association which caused him to abandon painting and join Morris' team of designers. De Morgan began to execute glass and tile designs for Morris, and painted panels for furniture designed by his associate Philip Webb. While working on stained glass De Morgan discovered that silver pigments caused an iridescence in the surface of the glass. His subsequent experiments on tiles to reproduce this effected created the first luster tiles in 1870. He took over the production of Morris' tile designs, copying Morris' floral and vegetative fabric and wallpaper patterns. These early designs included such Morrisian features as English flowers, daisies, anemones and roses painted in turquoise, pink, or yellow in simple outline against a monochrome blue or green ground. Such stylized designs suited well the two-dimensional surface of ceramic tile. De Morgan soon began to adapt these designs and develop his own naturalistic patterns to suit his increasingly innovative technical methods. De Morgan developed his most distinctive and mature style in lusterware ceramics. His rediscovery of traditional thirteenth century Islamic pottery from Turkey, Persia, and Syria inspired him to innovatively imitate carnation, tulip, and palmette patterns found on these ceramics in their characteristically rich blue and turquoise glazes. De Morgan's 'Persian colours,' as these ceramics were known, became the hallmark of his work and the fashion throughout Victorian England. De Morgan's ceramic works in Sand's End, London, executed his most mature work. As the most expensive of De Morgan wares, distinctive vase forms were rendered in earthenware by the firm's employees and painted by De Morgan himself or presumably under his supervision. Designs were traced from the paper onto the clay body by pricking the principle lines of the drawing through the paper and forcing powdered charcoal, known as pounce, through these pinholes onto the unglazed pot. De Morgan thus utilized the limitless flexibility of the clay medium to create fancifully shaped vessels decorated with imaginative designs that bulged and twisted to conform to the contours of each piece. Fantastic animals and grotesque monsters contorted to fit rotund shapes and pots; quasi-Medieval ships sailed under billowing brightly patterned sails accompanied by friendly cavorting fishes and sea monsters. Although even signed De Morgan pottery is extremely difficult to date precisely since the firm often revived old designs, this vase purchased by the Glessners fits the style of De Morgan's later works executed at Sand's End. Its large circular lug handles are set vertically against the bulbous baluster-shaped body of the vase, masted Medieval vessels under full sail navigate seas filled with robust jumping fish in green, blue, turquoise, yellow, and aubergine. The Glessners probably purchased this vase in the 1890s while they were actively collecting objects d'art for their Chicago home.