Marc Louis Solon

Someone should write a history of the effect of the Franco-Prussian war on the development of the arts and crafts of mainland Europe and Britain. One significant consequence of that war was the German occupation of the village of Sèvres outside Paris and the break up of the old royal porcelain factory. The departure of one of its fines young artists, M.Marc Louis Solon, could not have been more timely as far as British ceramics were concerned.

As a student Solon had been attracted more by the terracottas and vases in the Cluny museum than by the great works displayed in the Louvre. The sketches he made in those days, representing imaginary masterpieces that he would one day execute in marble or bronze - precious metal even - had already been noticed in the world at large. Frederic Leighton had seen them while studying in the French capital and purchased a set of printed engravings. The same set was noticed by the art director at Sèvres. Soon trials began in the making and decoration of vases based on Solon's Cluny drawings of Greek specimens. The young man discussed with the distinguished chemist at the factory, M. Regnault, a number of decorative possibilities, including a revolutionary process described as pâte-sur-pâte, the laying of a white paste on a dark ground that is then built up layer by layer, with intricate, finely detailed hand work. It was a novel way of producing an effect that could rival and perhaps excel the high relief of Wedgwood's neo-classical jasper wares. It was at the instigation of another refugee, the well-known painter Victor Galland, that Solon crossed the Channel to England where he made straight for the Minton factory at Stoke-on-Trent. Not a moment too soon. In a pamphlet entitled 'A Century of Potting', the Frenchman described with unflattering honesty the pottery scene that greeted him. The words that summed up Solon's impression of the English Potteries in the first half of the 19th century, deserve a place in the story of British ceramic art.