In 1964 Serge Gauthier was appointed as the director of the Sèvres Manufactory, remaining in the role until 1976. An empathetic and unconventional administrator, he initiated a complete renewal of the manufactory’s spirit of production. Gauthier persuaded a new generation of artists to work at Sèvres, reducing its previous reliance on the reproduction of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century models. His immediate successors, Jean Mathieu (worked at Sèvres, 1976–82), Robert Bizot (worked at Sèvres, 1982–92), and Georges Touzenis (worked at Sèvres, 1992–2002), all followed him in nurturing the manufactory’s relationship with young, independent contemporary artists, even when the work they produced did not match the tastes of Sèvres’ commercial audience. 

During this experimental period, numerous materials were brought into play, including two new pastes developed at Sèvres in the laboratory of Antoine d’Albis (worked at Sèvres, 1964–2003). The first was a very white paste called pâte Antoine d’Albis (PAA) which was released in 1965 and was often combined with a semimatte glaze, especially in the 1970s. Both innovations are evident in the stark white architectural vase form of Christian Renonciat’s Medici Rolled Foam Vase. In 1977 a new soft paste containing phosphates was developed that artists embraced for its whiteness and the wide range of bright glazes that could be applied to it. Both Viola Frey’s Western Civilization and Richard Peduzzi’s Reform Vase display this paste’s characteristic use, combining bold shapes and kaleidoscopic color.

Jean (Hans) Arp (1866–1966), a German French sculptor, painter, poet, and founding member of the Dada movement, worked at the Sèvres Manufactory between 1963 and 1966 at the invitation of director Serge Gauthier. While there, Arp designed six vases exploring different materials, including stoneware, to create novel sculptural forms. Drawing inspiration from the natural world and the Sèvres repertoire, including an Art Nouveau vase created in 1900, Arp’s work reinvigorated the manufactory’s production of shapes, preparing the way for the experimental forms of other sculptors including Ettore Sottsass and Richard Peduzzi. In addition to vase prototypes and abstract low-relief forms, the manufactory has conserved a few of Arp’s preparatory drawings in its archives. The one featured here illustrates his vases’ simple silhouettes with cut-out colored and painted paper.

During her residence at the Sèvres Manufactory between 2008 and 2012, Kristin McKirdy (b. 1958) was inspired by eighteenth-century materials, including unglazed biscuit and the period’s palette of pastel colors. She worked with the manufactory’s chemists to develop several new glazes in a “McKirdy palette” of colors, including a burnished turquoise and two emerald tints meant to suggest the glimmer of gemstones. 

McKirdy’s Nature Morte resembles a grand dessert plate piled high with pure white confections and “delicious” colorful jewels. She describes it as “a symbolic homage to the prestige of the productions of the past, to the splendor and symbol of power associated with them.” The highly structured form of this sculpture posed a technical challenge, as its many sharp angles and crevices are difficult to replicate in porcelain.

The French-born American artist Arman (1928– 2005) is known for his éclatement sculptures, made by “exploding” ordinary objects and then artfully recomposing them. In 1987 he created Interactive Triptyque Vase, which adapted the form of one of the vases created at Sèvres between 1932 and 1948 by Émile Decoeur (1876–1953). Arman took Decoeur’s form, sliced it into three sections, then joined the pieces with metal hinges so that the object can be opened and closed like a screen. It is finished with traditional bleu de Sèvres and gold. This sculpture is technically challenging to manufacture because the delicate metal parts are embedded at the very edges of the porcelain sections.

Sculptor and designer Pucci de Rossi (1947–2013) collaborated with the Sèvres Manufactory in 2012, creating objects that spark imagination and humor. To create his Nuts and Bolts Vase, the artist started with a classical form from the repertoire, a Vase Medici designed by Alexandre Théodore Brongniart in 1806, who was in turn inspired by an antique krater owned by the Medici family. This sketch shows de Rossi’s careful preparation for his vase before its final form was executed in porcelain. His pairing of decorative porcelain with utilitarian nuts and bolts may seem surprising, but both are ancient tools that have survived despite technology’s advances.

Sculptor and ceramist Johan Creten (b. 1963) created works in porcelain and stoneware for Sèvres between 2004 and 2007, reviving several materials and techniques, some of which had been dormant since the 1960s. The title of this piece, Odore di Femmina de Sèvres (Scent of a Woman of Sèvres), is taken from a line in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni in which the famous seducer recognizes the presence of a woman by her scent. Here, Creten has evoked the woman’s fragrance using pastillage, an eighteenth-century technique developed at the Vincennes Manufactory to sculpt flowers. For Scent of a Woman of Sèvres, the raw porcelain pastille flowers were applied directly by molder-repairers onto a cast female torso, directed at every step by Creten.