Platter

This platter, decorated with a swimming carp, crickets, and morning glory flowers, was designed by Félix Bracquemond and produced as part of a dinner service commissioned by the glass and ceramics dealer François Eugène Rousseau. The “Rousseau Service” was both radically innovative and commercially successful after it debuted at the Paris World’s Fair in 1867, and is generally recognized as representing a turning point in design. Bracquemond’s compositions had no precedent in tableware design in Europe, instead borrowing their strong black outlines, asymmetry, and foreshortening from Japanese woodcut prints. Bracquemond was an influential advocate for Japanese art, inspired by his initial encounter with woodcuts by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) in the late 1850s. Indeed, many of the compositions in the Rousseau Service were suggested by images in woodcuts by both Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). Drawing on his expertise as a printmaker, Bracquemond used etching in order to evoke the broad lines and areas of shadow seen in woodcuts. These etchings were printed on nonabsorbent paper, which was then applied to the damp surface of the glaze, where the design was absorbed before firing; after this, coloring was added by hand. The resulting tableware proved so popular that it was produced—relatively affordably—in different versions by numerous manufacturers through 1940. This platter is from the earliest production of the service.