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Charles Catteau, a Frenchman born in the exquisite wine year 1880, started his ceramic career at the world-famous "Manufacture de Sèvres", where his tutor Théodore Deck taught him about the love for "l'art du feu". Sèvres brought Catteau to Nymphenburg, near München, a city, which inspired him, with it's new ideas about the fusion between art and industry (Werkbund Bewegung). This was also the city where he met and wed his wife, Thusnelde. |
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With his ceramic knowledge, his newly wed wife and a head full of industrial styling, he settled eventually in La Louvière, Belgium (1907). Catteau immediatly became a member of Anna Boch's "Kring Der Vrienden Der Schone Kunsten" (=Circle of Friends of The Fine Arts). He already knew Anna Boch from his time in München. She was the one that convinced him to come to La Louvière, where her daddy, about 60 years earlier, started the pottery works there. She must have felt the immense artistically presence within Charles Catteau, which would bring her industry to great heights. |
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Charles became a successful art deco designer. He was a leading figure in that field in Belgium during the period between the first and second World War. He got his inspiration mainly, from the "Japonism" with it's fine lining and it's botanical basis, from the "Africanism" with it's dominating cubic view and from the "Avant Gardism", the experimentalists, who got inspired by the scene of the "Ballet Russe" off Diaquilev, (like for instance Picasso and Cocteau) and the "Bauhaus" of Walter Gropius with it's geometrical designs, functional and sober. |
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It's truly miraculous that Charles Catteau got inspired by so many different styles, and with it produced the most wonderful designs. Nevertheless it took until 1925 before he at last got his international breakthrough and earned his acknowledgement which he so much deserved. In the beautiful pavilion, designed by Horta, on the world art fair in Paris, one could admire the magnificent vases of Catteau (for instance his vase with deer's). He would be seen as a leading figure in the Belgium art deco movement from the on. |
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