Bowl with Anemones

Artist André Fernand Thesmar (French, 1843-1912)

Place of OriginFrance

Date1900

Dimensions2 x 3 5/8 in. (5 x 9.1 cm)

Mediumgold, translucent enamel, plique-à-jour technique

ClassificationMetalwork

Credit LineMr. and Mrs. George M. Jones, Jr. Fund

Object number

2005.43

On View

Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion (2444 Monroe Street), Glass Pavilion Gallery, 5

DescriptionHemispherical bowl with a gold base ring and a gold band edging the rim. The curved walls are decorated in translucent enamel with two tiers of ten white anemonies with blue centers, their green stems generating from a brown trellis below, consisting of a row of thin pointed arches. The center of the base bears the mirror monogram "FT" below the date 1900, also in plique-à-jour.

Label TextInspired by Chinese and Japanese enamels, flower painter André Fernand Thesmar worked in plique-à-jour, an enameling technique with the appearance of stained glass, from the end of 1892 until 1908. Plique-à-jour (French for “letting in daylight”) is a technical tour-de-force with translucent enamel suspended within a gold filigree framework rather than fused to a copper or glass base. After the framework is shaped and assembled on an iron form, the open spaces are filled with ground glass enamel suspended in a glue-like medium. The surface tension of the liquid suspends the enamel within the filigree walls, like soap bubbles. The painterly effects of shading and multiple colors within one compartment require great skill. The enamel hardens when fired in an oven and results in a translucent enamel that lets light through the colored cells, like glass windows.Published ReferencesSotheby's, 20th-century Decorative Arts, Paris, May 26, lot 29.

Gabriel Mouray, "Fernand Thesmar, 1843-1912," Les Arts, 1912, pp. 19-22.

Page, Jutta-Annette, The Art of Glass: Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, Toledo Museum of Art, 2006, p. 164-165, repr. (col.) p. 165, (det.), p. 164.

Harrison, Stephen, Artistic Luxury: faberge Tiffany lalique, Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2008, p. 208, repr. (col.).

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, Toledo, 2009, p. 287, repr. (col.).

Exhibition HistoryToledo, Toledo Museum of Art, Paris: City of Art, November 6, 2009 - March 14, 2010.

San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 2009.

Comparative ReferencesSee also Régine de Plival de Guillebon, "Fernand Thesmar. Émailleur sur cuivre, or et porcelaine," L'objet d'art, no. 276, January 1994, pp. 44-53, ill., p.50, no. 8 (Musée d'Orsay bowl).