Factory Marks
Quimper Factory Marks
This section is intended to provide an overview of the information contained in the monthly website articles we have published since 1999 as well as our book on Quimper pottery.
I hope you will be able to take the time to read the rest of the site, including this month's The Town, The People and The Pottery article...click here...but I know that sometimes, you just want to quickly identify the marks and perhaps date your pieces, so I trust you will find this page helpful. But please understand that it is not a method for assigning a monetary value. That's because Quimper is a hand-painted art pottery and therefore there are individual characteristics that affect the value of each piece. For example, just because one piece of Quimper pottery is older than another does not automatically guarantee a higher value for the older example. There are newer pieces that are artistically superior to earlier examples and thus a newer piece may have a higher value.
Note that copies and fake pieces of Quimper often have markings that can pass as genuine, but for the sake of this article, we'll assume that the pieces are genuine, vintage Quimper...examples made in the town of Quimper sometime between 1708 and today.
Read on to gain further insight, but for those of you who just have to find an answer right away, if you click on each factory's name shown directly below, you'll open a new window with a listing of common examples of marks used by that factory:
HB
Henriot
Porquier
Fouillen
Kéraluc
HB-Henriot and other factories
But the same links are also at the bottom of the page and I hope you'll first take the time to read these tips:
Regular readers of www.oldquimper.com are all too familiar with my rantings about the marks on a piece of Quimper pottery being just about the least effective method of evaluation.
Case in point:
Fact: the Henriot factory went out of business in 1968.
Reality: genuine pieces of Quimper pottery were produced using the Henriot mark for many, many years beyond 1968.
Confused? The explanation is because when the Henriot factory went out of business, the HB factory purchased the rights to their molds, designs and marks and reorganized as Les Faïenceries de Quimper. To avoid confusing the existing customers of both enterprises, separate work areas and production lines were established and maintained.
This section is intended to provide an overview of the information contained in the monthly website articles we have published since 1999 as well as our book on Quimper pottery.
I hope you will be able to take the time to read the rest of the site, including this month's The Town, The People and The Pottery article...click here...but I know that sometimes, you just want to quickly identify the marks and perhaps date your pieces, so I trust you will find this page helpful. But please understand that it is not a method for assigning a monetary value. That's because Quimper is a hand-painted art pottery and therefore there are individual characteristics that affect the value of each piece. For example, just because one piece of Quimper pottery is older than another does not automatically guarantee a higher value for the older example. There are newer pieces that are artistically superior to earlier examples and thus a newer piece may have a higher value.
Note that copies and fake pieces of Quimper often have markings that can pass as genuine, but for the sake of this article, we'll assume that the pieces are genuine, vintage Quimper...examples made in the town of Quimper sometime between 1708 and today.
Read on to gain further insight, but for those of you who just have to find an answer right away, if you click on each factory's name shown directly below, you'll open a new window with a listing of common examples of marks used by that factory:
HB
Henriot
Porquier
Fouillen
Kéraluc
HB-Henriot and other factories
But the same links are also at the bottom of the page and I hope you'll first take the time to read these tips:
Regular readers of www.oldquimper.com are all too familiar with my rantings about the marks on a piece of Quimper pottery being just about the least effective method of evaluation.
Case in point:
Fact: the Henriot factory went out of business in 1968.
Reality: genuine pieces of Quimper pottery were produced using the Henriot mark for many, many years beyond 1968.
Confused? The explanation is because when the Henriot factory went out of business, the HB factory purchased the rights to their molds, designs and marks and reorganized as Les Faïenceries de Quimper. To avoid confusing the existing customers of both enterprises, separate work areas and production lines were established and maintained.
The "HB Quimper" mark used on a piece made during the time period of 1968-1983. In this case, the piece was an HB design...the motif was designated by the "D" or décor number 240 and the piece itself was form or "F" number 176. The artist was known as "Z" and he or she worked at the decorators' studio supervised by "R".
The personnel working with the former Henriot designs marked their production "Henriot Quimper" with a number for the specific form...the "F" number...and a number for the particular decoration...the "D" number. Those working with HB designs marked their pieces "HB Quimper" with the appropriate "f" and "d" numbers. This practice continued throughout the time that the "blended company" was in business, i.e. from 1968 to 1983.
Further confusion comes from "re-issues" of earlier designs produced by the firm known as the Société Nouvelle des Faïenceries de Quimper (1984-2003). These pieces were not issued with their customary mark that reads "HB-Henriot", but rather the mark that had been on the original piece that was being re-created. Just like one musician, e.g. Michael Jackson, can own the rights to the songs of another musician, e.g. The Beatles, that factory owned the rights to use the previous markings and designs used at Porquier, Henriot, Kéraluc, etc.
To illustrate:
Further confusion comes from "re-issues" of earlier designs produced by the firm known as the Société Nouvelle des Faïenceries de Quimper (1984-2003). These pieces were not issued with their customary mark that reads "HB-Henriot", but rather the mark that had been on the original piece that was being re-created. Just like one musician, e.g. Michael Jackson, can own the rights to the songs of another musician, e.g. The Beatles, that factory owned the rights to use the previous markings and designs used at Porquier, Henriot, Kéraluc, etc.
To illustrate:
We photographed this wonderful array of recently-produced pieces of Quimper faïence in a shop in Quimper...
...enlarging the photograph of the jardinière in the center allows you to see that it is marked "Henriot Quimper" in the décor to the right of the petit breton even though it was of recent production...made decades after the Henriot factory went out of business. So, you see, unlike other pottery where the mark tells you precisely where and when the object was produced, you should not rely solely on the markings on a piece of Quimper pottery for establishing age. Instead you should concentrate on the colors of the glaze and clay...for example, the crisp whites of the pieces in the photograph taken in the store are an indication that the pieces are from a later era of production.
That said, here are some general guidelines for understanding the many marks used over the years by the various factories that worked in Quimper:
While earlier grès (stoneware) was dutifully marked because of government regulations, for the most part Quimper pottery was not systematically marked until around 1870.
In most cases, the mark, like the piece itself, was hand-painted and is therefore as unique as the decoration.
Where the piece is signed is not a guaranteed indication of age. Some newer examples are signed on the front, some older pieces are signed on the back, still others are signed both front and back.
The addition of the designation "Quimper" does not automatically indicate a piece that was made after 1904. Although both of the following marks include the word "Quimper", the pieces on which the marks are found were made about 120 years apart...
That said, here are some general guidelines for understanding the many marks used over the years by the various factories that worked in Quimper:
While earlier grès (stoneware) was dutifully marked because of government regulations, for the most part Quimper pottery was not systematically marked until around 1870.
In most cases, the mark, like the piece itself, was hand-painted and is therefore as unique as the decoration.
Where the piece is signed is not a guaranteed indication of age. Some newer examples are signed on the front, some older pieces are signed on the back, still others are signed both front and back.
The addition of the designation "Quimper" does not automatically indicate a piece that was made after 1904. Although both of the following marks include the word "Quimper", the pieces on which the marks are found were made about 120 years apart...
...the piece above dates from circa 1860...
The HR underlined mark of Camille Moreau who worked at the Henriot pottery from 1891 to 1895.
....while this mark is on a piece from circa 1980. The 1904 demarcation is an outdated supposition that was based on an old and erroneous interpretation of information. The practice of consistently adding the designation "Quimper" had its beginnings in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and was a result of the commercial success of the scenes bretonnes decorations. Potteries from other areas quickly jumped on the band wagon and the market was soon inundated with petit bretons from places far beyond the limits of Quimper...and even far beyond the borders of Brittany.
We discovered how the 1904 error came about when we were researching for our book on Quimper pottery. It turns out that after copyright lawsuits were initiated against the Pouplard pottery in Malicorne, the potteries in Quimper took protective measures, including finally getting around to registering their respective marks. Marks that they had been using for years and years. The right to use the place of origin in a mark was in practice in France for many years and was the subject of an 1824 national law...a law that was upheld in a ruling in Quimper in 1904. The practice did not initiate in 1904, it was merely tested in court on that date.
Those who insist on dating by the marks should disregard any notion of 1904...proof in point are the pieces of Camille Moreau, a painter at the Porquier factory trained by Alfred Beau. In 1891, Moreau was lured to leave his employ at the Porquier factory by Jules Henriot, who wanted him to work in faïence at his rival factory, located a stone's throw up the road. Note that prior to that date, Henriot's factory did not produce faïence...only grès. Moreau was a marvelous painter and it is his work that adorns the table service created to celebrate the wedding of Jules Henriot to Anne-Marie Riou on February 6, 1893. His pieces are marked with a distinctive underline under the HR. It is well-documented that Moreau only worked as a pottery painter until 1895...yet his pieces are marked with the Quimper notation...a notation that, as you can see, had its beginnings well before 1904.
We discovered how the 1904 error came about when we were researching for our book on Quimper pottery. It turns out that after copyright lawsuits were initiated against the Pouplard pottery in Malicorne, the potteries in Quimper took protective measures, including finally getting around to registering their respective marks. Marks that they had been using for years and years. The right to use the place of origin in a mark was in practice in France for many years and was the subject of an 1824 national law...a law that was upheld in a ruling in Quimper in 1904. The practice did not initiate in 1904, it was merely tested in court on that date.
Those who insist on dating by the marks should disregard any notion of 1904...proof in point are the pieces of Camille Moreau, a painter at the Porquier factory trained by Alfred Beau. In 1891, Moreau was lured to leave his employ at the Porquier factory by Jules Henriot, who wanted him to work in faïence at his rival factory, located a stone's throw up the road. Note that prior to that date, Henriot's factory did not produce faïence...only grès. Moreau was a marvelous painter and it is his work that adorns the table service created to celebrate the wedding of Jules Henriot to Anne-Marie Riou on February 6, 1893. His pieces are marked with a distinctive underline under the HR. It is well-documented that Moreau only worked as a pottery painter until 1895...yet his pieces are marked with the Quimper notation...a notation that, as you can see, had its beginnings well before 1904.
After World War I, both the HB factory and the Henriot factory added the word "France", but only on pieces that were destined for export. Prior to that, a paper label was used to designate exported goods...a label that has undoubtedly been washed off by now.
Examples stamped or marked "Fait Main" or "Décor Entièrement à la Main" (indicating they were decorated by hand) were produced after World War II.
Examples stamped or marked "Fait Main" or "Décor Entièrement à la Main" (indicating they were decorated by hand) were produced after World War II.
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Speaking of paper labels, in the 1980s this label was used on pieces that were re-issued using vintage patterns...in many cases, the painted design included the earlier markings that were in effect for the original motif. When the label was removed, if one were to rely solely on the markings for establishing the date of production, it might appear to be an actual vintage piece.
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The paper label used in the 1980s to inform customers that the piece was not as old as it appeared. Unfortunately, these were easily removed.
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Artists' Marks and Other Miscellany:
This mark was used on limited edition pieces issued by HB-Henriot in honor of what was then thought to be the 300th anniversary of the founding of the first modern-day pottery factory in Quimper. It has since been discovered that the factory was founded in 1708.
This mark...a reference to the miraculous fish of Saint Corentin...is found on pieces made by the HB factory that were designed in the 1920s for the Hostellerie du Relais de Saint Corentin by Adolphe Jean Lachaud (1889-1952)
This type of mark indicates a piece that was a special order for a specific reseller. In this case, "Fortunio" is thought to represent a store in the south of France that ordered pieces with designs that were not in the regular catalog. Both the HB pottery and the Henriot pottery did so for stores throughout France as well as for international retailers. This type of mark generally appears on special command pieces that often involved customized motifs. In this case, the hash-tag mark is part of the HB pottery's "morse-code" like marks that they used from 1917 to 1942. (Note that the "#" mark in particular had previously thought to have been assigned to Paul Fouillen when he was first working at the HB pottery, but new information refutes this claim. The confusion comes from pieces where Fouillen painted the central motif and a staff member assigned to the "#" mark painted the border).
Like the previous example, this piece was made at the HB factory for a specific retailer...in this case Macy's.
Sometimes the factory designation was included...in this case, "HB Quimper". (Both the Henriot and the HB factory produced pieces for Kenilworth Studios, a distributor that started as a wholesale division of Chicago's Marshall Field's department store; other French potteries will have Kenilworth Studio marks as well, including Longwy).
This type of mark with an artist's name indicates a piece that used a design...it could be the painted pattern or the mold...that had been created by and sold to the particular factory by a specific artist...in this instance, Charles Maillard. It does not indicate that the named artist ever touched that specific piece. In general, when a specific artist actually created a specific piece, it was signed in a different and distinct manner and sometimes included the notation "pièce unique".
The same goes for this piece designed by Jim-Eugène Sévellec...it was not painted by Jim-Eugène Sévellec...
...nor was this piece with the known signature of Mathurin Méheut personally painted by Mathurin Méheut. The markings indicate that circa 1930, Henriot artist number 15 decorated this plate with a design created by Mathurin Méheut and that the piece was intended to be sold outside of France.
A reminder that this information was written to provide a wee bit of guidance on the markings found on Quimper pottery...it is by no means complete...and more importantly...it's the artistic quality of the painting, the sculptural essence of the mold and the execution of the firing of a piece that truly matters...not the mark!
A reminder that this information was written to provide a wee bit of guidance on the markings found on Quimper pottery...it is by no means complete...and more importantly...it's the artistic quality of the painting, the sculptural essence of the mold and the execution of the firing of a piece that truly matters...not the mark!
The images below represent various different Quimper potteries. Click on them to see the most commonly found markings for each of the different factories. Again, please remember that this is presented to serve as a guide and is by no means a complete listing.
