European art pottery around 1900 was a profoundly experimental and international movement. This handsome volume, published in conjunction with a major gift to the Saint Louis Art Museum, traces the movement’s development through more than 150 works by both celebrated and forgotten makers, offering a rare and nuanced view of modern ceramics across six regions – France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Austria and Italy. 
  
This richly illustrated catalogue, edited by David Conradsen, celebrates a major gift of more than 150 examples of European art pottery donated to the Saint Louis Art Museum by the scholar and collector Dr. Martin Eidelberg. Made across continental Europe between about 1880 and 1930, these works demonstrate the extraordinary variety of form, surface, and ornament realised over a fifty-year span. Many date from around the turn of the twentieth century and reveal how artists, designers, and manufacturers responded to the so-called ‘Cult of Nature’, filtered through personal expression, technical experimentation, and the emergence of modernist design ideals.
 
Strongest in works by French makers – reflecting the origins of the movement in France in the 1870s – the catalogue includes ceramics by well-known figures such as Ernest Chaplet, Émile Decoeur, and Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat, alongside works by many lesser-known or rarely collected artists. These include Atelier Glatigny, ‘Robalbhen’, and Nils de Barck, among numerous others, offering a broader and more nuanced picture of the movement than is typically available in American museum collections.
 
The book opens with an introductory essay situating European art pottery within its historical and artistic context. Short essays, co-authored by Eidelberg and the scholar Jonathan Clancy, introduce each geographical section by examining pottery production in specific regions around 1900. Individual works are catalogued by Conradsen and expanded upon with entries by Eidelberg. Fully illustrated throughout, the volume also includes a ceramic marks reference section and a selected bibliography.