page_title: Alexandre Bigot
section_title: Early life and discovery of ceramics
hierarchical_section_title: Alexandre Bigot / Early life and discovery of ceramics
caption_attribution_description: English: Fireplace designed by Hector Guimard and Manufactured by Alexandre Bigot, in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (USA), ca. 1895. Аҧсшәа: Cheminée dessinée par Hector Guimard et fait par Alexandre Bigot, dans la collection du Philadelphia Museum of Art (E-U), vers 1895.
context_page_description: Alexandre Bigot was a French ceramicist. He was primarily a ceramics manufacturer; producing the designs of many artists and architects of the French Art Nouveau movement; including: Jules Lavirotte, Hector Guimard, Louis Majorelle, Henri Sauvage, Henry van de Velde, Auguste Perret, Andre Arfvidson, Anatole de Baudot and more.
  Bigot was a physics and chemistry instructor who became interested in ceramics in 1889 after viewing Chinese porcelain at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. With his knowledge of chemistry, Bigot was able to create glazes with a large variety of colors and finishes.
  Bigot's firm was based at Rue des Petites Ecuries, Paris and he also created a ceramics factory in Mer in 1889 which employed as many as 150 people. Siegfried Bing, a German art dealer in Paris, displayed works by Bigot, among others, and was responsible for introducing the Art Nouveau style. Bigot’s Parisian firm closed in 1914 due to a decline in the popularity of Art Nouveau.
context_section_description: Alexandre Bigot was trained in the sciences before eventually excelling in the arts. He obtained a degree in physics in 1884. He also held a doctorate in chemistry and was interested very early on in creating enamels resembling natural gems. After a brief stint in the studio of Paul Beyer (1873-1945) in Switzerland, and recognizing the limits imposed on setting up a laboratory in Paris, in 1889 Bigot set up his first kiln in Aunay, his hometown (today called Aulnay, now a district within the city limits of Mer. The same year, he became one of a number of artists of his generation who were attracted to the eastern ceramic wares that they saw at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris. Among Bigot's contemporaries who saw these examples was Jean-Joseph Carriès, who like Bigot had his own studio and was engaged in research on ceramics, knowledge which he began to refine upon meeting Bigot. The two artists began a correspondence on the subject and Bigot became extremely interested in Carriès' work. Bigot's knowledge of chemistry allowed him to become an adviser to Ernest Chaplet for his sculpture and Carriès as well as a collaborator with the chemist Henry Le Chatelier. On the practical side (turning and modeling), he benefitted from the advice of Raphaël Tessier (1860-1937).
caption: Fireplace designed by Hector Guimard and manufactured by Alexandre Bigot, in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (United States), ca. 1895.
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