SAMSON, PARIS, FRANCE, CIRCA 1878

Samson ceramics are amongst the most prestigious made in France during the second half of the 19th century. Edme ‘Mardoché’ Samson (1810-1891) was the first of his family to open a workshop in Paris in 1845. His first pieces were executed in the Romantic style. The production rose throughout the third quarter of the 19th century, following the high demand for luxury objects encouraged by the court of Napoleon III. The workshop started creating pieces for the export market. Edme introduced his eldest son Emile to the business and it is under the name Samson E. Père et Fils Aîné that they participated in the Paris International Exhibition of 1867. In 1879 under Emile’s supervision, the workshop was moved to a new site located in Montreuil, just outside Paris, and employed about 125 craftsmen. The production is considered luxurious – the Sevres Museum bought pigments from the Samsons in 1878-79 and the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired a few pieces after the Paris Great Exhibition of 1889. The workshop reproduced published pieces from important public and private collections and occasionally bought antiques that they sell after copying them. Emile and his son Léon worked together under the name Samson et Fils until the beginning of the 20th century.

The publication of Recueil de dessins pour l’Art et l’Industrie, engraved by Adalbert de Beaumont in 1859 after his travels in the Middle East gave Samson an interest for oriental pieces as well as providing ceramicists with a vast repertoire of motifs. Other ceramicists such as Theodore Deck, Edmond Lachenal et Leon Parvillee also start producing pieces in the Islamic style. Copies of Ottoman ceramics were produced in larger numbers by Samson and other makers such as Cantagalli after the purchase by Cluny Museum between 1865 and 1878 of the Salzmann Collection, comprising over 500 Ottoman ceramics. Prices and interest for Ottoman ceramics continued to rise after the exhibitions in London and Munich in 1885, 1907 and 1910. A vase with a similar decoration to the present piece in the Iznik ‘Damascus style’ and with mark ‘E’ is published in Florence Slitine, Samson Génie de l’imitation, Paris, 2002, p.76. Another sold at Christie’s South Kensington, 22 APril 2016, lot 414.