Jean Girel - Ox Blood Cup

Truncated cone cup on heel - covered oxblood porcelain H=7 D=17 - signed - circa 1980 a very small chip on the lip Jean GIREL Jean GIREL was born in Savoie in 1947. His parents ran a school training in agricultural professions. In addition to teaching, the school offered its students workshops to discover other cultural fields around the earth. This is how he discovered ceramics at the age of 10. During his high school, he took pottery classes at the Maison des Jeunes in Chambéry. At 18, he was already a good turner and made around sixty bowls per hour. Ceramics was already a passion for him. His parents wanted him to study, so he went to the Beaux-Arts in Macon, got a degree in plastic arts in Paris and became, at the age of 21 (this was in 1968), a high school drawing teacher. He began a career as a painter, exhibiting in several galleries in the capital (you can come across some of his early paintings in the auction room), when in 1975, he discovered SONG ceramics. His encounter with these Chinese master potters of the Middle Ages made him decide to devote his life to this medium, which he considered more complete than painting, closer to the elements, his hands in the earth and water, his face facing the fire. A craftsman, he himself prepares the materials he works with, the clays and enamels which are an eternal site of research and experimentation. He gleans his clays from quarries in Dordogne, his kaolins from Allier, his feldspars from Morvan or Bavaria, his silica from Drôme or Vaucluse. He stores all these raw materials in his workshop in the commune of Le Château near Cluny while waiting for a new project, a new series. During his career, he built 18 ovens, ranging from the traditional wood-fired oven to a mixed electric/liquid fuel oven, controlled by a computer allowing him to measure and control the air inlets and outlets, the oxidizing, neutral or reducing registers, the smoking and the balance between water and carbon, etc. As an artist, he draws his references, in addition to the SONG, from Flemish painting of the 15th century, from his great predecessors from the beginning of the last century such as Chapallaz, Dalpayrat, Decoeur or Delaherche and, perhaps above all, from the observation of nature, its landscapes, its animals, its raw elements such as earth, air, fire and water. Jean GIREL also attracts attention through his commitment to the transmission of his knowledge. In 1976, he welcomed an intern for 4 years in his workshop and in 2000, as part of his appointment as Master of Art, he trained his apprentice, Emmanuel BOOS, and taught him in particular the art of enameling. He developed the GIREL 3E kiln (Ergonomic, Ecological, Economical), a new generation wood-fired kiln, and distributed his plans under a public license (Creative Commons). Finally, Jean GIREL is the author of numerous books, articles, and exhibition catalogs. His pieces are present in more than twenty museums around the world; in France, of course, but also in Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China. References: art-angelux.com – written by Christine Lavenu: https://www.art-angelux.com/girel STANDARD INVENTORY SHEET OF FRANCE’S INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE – written by Lamia Gabriel: file:///C:/Users/steph/Downloads/La%20c%C3%A9ramique%20d'art%20-%20Jean%20Girel.pdf Four GIREL 3E website: https://hermansgirel.wixsite.com/girel3e J. Girel website: https://www.jeangirel.fr