By Louise Irvine

The Paris metro system, designed by Hector Guimard, exemplifies the Art Nouveau style in architecture, and Antoni Gaudí is acclaimed for his iconic buildings in Barcelona. In Britain, the Royal Doulton Potteries were responsible for the facades of the country’s surviving Art Nouveau structures, including the Everard Building in Bristol, and the Royal Arcade in Norwich. These flamboyant tiled buildings were the work of William James Neatby, manager of Doulton’s architectural department, who also designed the tiles for the Harrods food halls in London.

Doulton also followed the Art Nouveau style at their Burslem Studio in Staffordshire, and advertisements promoted their “New Century Art Ware” featuring twisting tendrils and undulating foliate forms. Meanwhile, the tube-lined designs, created at the Lambeth Studio to delineate flowing Art Nouveau motifs, were reproduced in small editions for their “New Style” stoneware vases.

The tube-lining or slip-trailing technique was made even more famous by William Moorcroft. He began designing his Florian ware for Macintyre & Company of Burslem at the very end of the 19th century. His floral designs have been described as English Art Nouveau and combine graceful lines with the naturalism of the Arts & Crafts movement.

Florian ware was sold internationally, notably by Tiffany & Co. in New York, Shreve & Co. in San Francisco and Liberty & Co. in London. When William Moorcroft opened his own factory in 1913, Liberty’s became part-owner of the company and one of their biggest retailers. Founded by Arthur Lasenby Liberty in 1874, this London store specialized in importing textiles and exotic art objects from Japan and the Far East, as well as selling “new art” by leading British designers. The influence of this shopping emporium was so great that Art Nouveau became known as the Liberty Style in Italy.

Moorcroft’s Florian ware pattern featuring peacock feathers was especially popular in the early 1900s and was revived at Moorcroft’s modern studio, along with many other Art Nouveau-style patterns by influential designers of the era, including William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and C.A. Voysey. Peacock feathers also inspired Liberty’s Hera textile design, which was first introduced in the 1880s and is still produced today. Thanks to the generosity of Jeffrey Michaels, Liberty’s local representative, beautiful Hera velvet fabric is on display in the Peacock Room at WMODA.

The Peacock Room celebrates the muse of the Art Nouveau era, and its iridescent feathers inspired many Victorian art potteries to create peacock designs to decorate the Aesthetic home at the turn of the last century. Burmantofts’ spectacular peacock jardinière is displayed alongside cabinets inlaid with peacocks by Shapland & Petter, one of the leading furniture manufacturers in Britain. Minton of Stoke-on-Trent featured peacocks in their Majolica and Secessionist wares, named after the Vienna Secessionist movement, led by the artist Gustav Klimt. In Art Nouveau Europe, the Nymphenburg porcelain factory’s peacock strutted right out of paradise with its spectacular plumage and marvelous train of feathers.

Innovative potters perfected lustrous glazes reflecting jewel tones and created elegant vases and figurines that glimmered under the gas lights of the times.  The Zsolnay factory in Hungary produced some of the most dazzling effects with their Eosin glaze. The reflective, metallic sheen was developed in several colors and decorated with stylized patterns of birds and animals in the 1890s. A rare vase at WMODA by Clement Massier, the French studio potter, depicts a slender snake on a lustrous blue background. Another French artist, Jacques Sicard, was hired by the Weller Pottery in Ohio to produce a new line of luster pottery in 1902.

In England, the Pilkington Studio in Lancashire engaged a talented team of decorators to paint lustrous vases and plaques for the Royal Lancastrian brand. John Butler at A. J. Wilkinson’s factory in Staffordshire developed Oriflamme, featuring glistening shoals of fish swimming among fronds of seaweed. At Wedgwood, Daisy Makeig-Jones designed vases for their new liquid luster glazes featuring dragons and butterflies. The shimmering wings of insects and birds were popular design motifs in the Art Nouveau era and adorned all types of decorative art, from jewelry to furniture.

The Art Nouveau style flourished in architecture and interior design until the disruption of the First World War, when people turned away from decorative exuberance towards the more streamlined forms of Art Deco.

Read more about Art Nouveau

Chasing the Rainbow at WMODA | Wiener Museum

Fantastique Faience | Wiener Museum

Mysterious Mermaids | Wiener Museum

Liberty Style | Wiener Museum

The Kiss | Wiener Museum

Proud as a Peacock | Wiener Museum