Stoneware Bowl with Sun Motif by Jean-Claude Taburet for HB Henriot (circa 1960s-70s)

Vintage Stoneware Bowl with Sun Motif by Jean-Claude Taburet for HB Henriot (circa 1960s-70s). A strong and characteristic piece from Jean-Claude Taburet's long collaboration with the HB Henriot manufactory in Quimper, France, the oldest continuously active faïencerie in the country, tracing its origins to 1690. The coupe is worked in stoneware, its decoration incised into the clay body with a central sun motif, its rays spreading outward in the ancient manner common to Breton traditions, surrounded and framed by a series of stylised flowers. The incised lines have depth to them, shadow, the sense of a hand pressing deliberately into resistant material. It is a modest form in scale, but it carries the weight of a much larger object.

The sun is not an incidental choice of motif. For Taburet, working in a region saturated with Celtic legend and ancient symbolic imagery, solar forms carried genuine cultural meaning — a continuity between the prehistoric standing stones of Carnac, the illuminated manuscripts of early Breton Christianity, and the modernist decorative tradition he was simultaneously engaged with. The result is a piece that feels rooted rather than merely decorative. The piece is in very good overall condition. It is signed to the underside with the HB Henriot Quimper mark and Taburet's name. All works bearing this HB mark pre-date 1984, when he departed the manufactory. The incised sun and frieze decoration is characteristic of his output from the 1960s and early 1970s, the most sought-after period of his HB production.

Dimensions:

H 5.5 cm / 2.2"

Dia 29.5 cm / 11.6"

About the Artist: Jean-Claude Taburet (1926–2013) was born in Château-Gontier in the Mayenne and trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rennes before continuing at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, where he also studied at the Académie de la Grande-Chaumière. In 1951 he began work at the Manufacture Keraluc in Quimper, and in 1956 joined HB Henriot as a freelance artist-designer — a relationship that would last nearly three decades. There he created stoneware services, dishes, and decorative objects, exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs and the Salon de l'Art Sacré in Paris. In 1984 he and his Finnish wife Marjatta — herself a distinguished ceramicist and the author of the standard reference work on Quimper faïence — left HB Henriot to found the Atelier du Steïr from their home in Quimper, where they worked until the end of his life. Together they are recognised as among the most important figures in the three-hundred-year history of Quimper ceramics. His work is held in the Musée Départemental Breton, the Musée de la Faïence de Quimper, and public collections internationally.