The Torhout pottery is leading in “Flemish pottery”. The name “Torhouts pottery” is often used to describe other Flemish pottery. The Torhout pottery was exclusively handcrafted, the motifs (typical of Torhouts) were applied with colored angobe, and the typical colors were obtained by mixing the clay with metal oxides. For example: cobalt oxide for blue, copper oxide for green, lunar oxide for brown lead red lead was used as glazing agent. The pottery was baked “monocuisson” in a coal and wood fired oven. </p>
<p> Torhout has a long tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages, they were ordinary utensils with the local red-fired clays, without any decoration and covered with lead glaze. In the Torhout archives, mention is already made in 1542, this tradition continued until 1939 (some well-known potters’ families, Roose, Acke, Willemeyns, Maes). , holy water bowls, tiles, flower boxes, etc.
In a later period (from 1895) Leo Maes started making mainly artificial pottery, such as vases, jugs, tobacco pots and other decorative pieces, sometimes with flowers in high relief. A common decoration are flowers in a flat relief, where the decoration is often prepared with incised contour lines. Beautiful pieces of pottery were made in Art Nouveau style and folk style.
Shown is a handmade small spherical art pot in Torhout pottery, made during the Art Nouveau period. The pâte is applied with multi-colored lead glazes, such as light and dark green, cream-colored, blue and even black. This pot is decorated at the top with engraved star motifs and vertical lines and overlaid with a thick cream-colored engobe in the shape of C-curls. There are spherical engobe elevations here and there across the corpus. The inside is also glazed. The jar stands on a low circular base. It has a short cylindrical neck with two parallel concentric necked lines. At the bottom, the bottom is not glazed, but it is engraved and creux with “1914” and “BELGIUM”. We also see in black color probably an ax extended by the letter “j” and two black lines. This could stand for the name Van Acke, professor at the Academy of Kortrijk and ceramic maker ?? Rare object.

Condition: perfect.