BY EUGENE COLLINOT, CIRCA 1870

Eugène-Victor Collinot (d.1882) was born at Röhrbach, Moselle, and studied ceramics in Algeria and the east while serving in the French army. He collaborated with Adalbert de Beaumont to publish a design book Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs de l'Orient, divided by style including Ornements de la Chine and Ornements arabes, persans et turcs and contains engravings recording works of art in their own collections and seen on their travels. The encyclopédie had a seminal influence on the introduction of Middle and Far Eastern styles to French artists such as Théodore Deck. In 1863, Collinot and Beaumont founded their own faience factory in Boulogne-sur-Seine inventing a technique to control the flow of enamels on ceramic to create colourful and detailed decoration, which he called cloisonné because of its resemblance to the Far Eastern enamel metalwork of that name.