List of products by brand Jean Joseph Marie Carriès

Jean Joseph Marie Carriès was born in 1855 in Lyon. Orphaned at a very young age, he trained in a craft context before joining the Parisian art scene. This dual influence, both artisanal and academic, played a decisive role in shaping his work, which is deeply attached to materiality and manual labour. 

Carriès began his career as sculptor, his portraits are characterised by an almost dramatic intensity, with strongly modelled, sometimes deformed faces, reflecting a research into physiognomy and character rather than idealisation. His portraits are characterised by an almost dramatic intensity, with strongly modelled, sometimes deformed faces, reflecting a search for physiognomy and character rather than idealisation. 

From the 1880s onwards, he turned increasingly towards ceramics, this is a discipline in which he is developing an innovative body of work. He is particularly interested in sandstone, he experiments with these materials in sculptural forms and decorative objects. His work is characterised by extreme attention to glazes, textures and firing effects, making the material a central element of artistic expression. 

Stoneware by Carriès often feature thick, irregular, deeply worked surfaces. The glazes, sometimes dark or shaded, accentuate the expressive, almost archaic dimension of his creations. This approach breaks with traditional decorative conventions and places his work in the context of radical research into materiality. 

Carriès is part of an artistic context marked by an interest in the arts of fire, Japanese art and the revival of the decorative arts. He developed a personal vision in which sculpture and ceramics merged, abolishing the boundaries between major and applied art. His work anticipates certain twentieth-century research into material and form. 

Jean Joseph Marie Carriès dies prematurely in 1894. Despite a short career, he left a singular and profoundly innovative body of work. Today, he is recognised as a key figure in the revival of artistic ceramics and as a creator who pushed back the expressive boundaries of sculpture and the decorative arts at the end of the 19th century.