Jug

The ball-shaped body is supported by a short, cylindrical foot and continues in a cylindrical, medium sized neck. The flat, cylindrical handle rises from the shoulders to the top rim in a round curve. The neck is painted between two drawn friezes, the body is decorated with four repeated flower motifs below a row of leaves: three flower stems inside each stylized pomegranate, enclosed by pinks and flowers. There are tulips at the bottom. The vivid colours such as ultramarine, green and terracotta-red are very effective upon the white opaque base. The contour lines have two functions: to decorate and to prevent the colours running into each other. The handle is decorated with blue stripes, without any contour lines. On the basis of nineteenth century acquisitions of the Musée de Cluny, the piece was regarded to have been made in Rhodes yet Theodore Deck used these sixteenth or seventeenth century models from Turkey, Isnik or Khitahya. The masterpieces of Islamic art were revived by Th. Deck at a perfect technical level, as proved by the jug described above. The heavy glassy nature of the glaze, its brightness and the delicacy of painting were already admired by his contemporaries. From 186l on Deck had been strenuously studying, innovating and following Persian, Turkish and Spanish- Moor ceramic art. He published his experience in his book entitled La Fayance.