Pottery from the workshop of Vincent Diana in CERAMICA CH
Roland Blaettler, 2019
In the Canton of Neuchâtel we discovered, or rather re-discovered, a pottery workshop that was completely unknown to us. It is hardly mentioned in the literature except for an essay written by two schoolgirls, Marianne Biselli and Antonella Simonetti. Entitled Travail de l’argile au Val-de-travers hier et aujourd’hui [Working with clay in Val-de-travers yesterday and today] it was written in 1984 under the guidance of Pierre-André Klauser. Not overly ambitious in its scope, the paper, a typewritten manuscript, actually mentions a pottery run by Vincent Diana in Champ-du-Moulin (municipality of Boudry) in the period between 1890 and 1905.
A recently discovered news item from the Le Nouvelliste Vaudois newspaper dated 10th March 1900 (page 2) contains further details about the establishment of Diana’s workshop. It reads: “A new enterprise has recently been set up in the picturesque clearing of Champ-du-Moulin. It is a workshop producing pots made from marl or local clay.” The Musée d’art et d’histoire de Neuchâtel (Neuchâtel Museum of Art and History) has in its collection two unfinished ceramic objects from the workshop presented by the potter himself, as well as three more finished examples donated by Alfred Godet and Théodore Delachaux. They suggest that the museum was interested in contemporary artisanship and, more importantly, in a workshop that had not long been in operation in the canton and that had obviously raised people’s hopes.
The unfinished biscuit-fired objects (MAHN AA 1321; MAHN AA 1320) presented by Diana were added to the collection in 1899, as was a bowl donated by Alfred Godet, which had been decorated by a Mrs O. Godet (MAHN AA 2072). This shows that the potter had commenced the work a few months prior to the spring of 1900 but had, however, not yet mastered all of the production process. The painted bowl was in fact “enamelled and fired in Nyon”, probably at the facilities of the Manufacture de poteries fines de Nyon. All three of these early examples exhibit a mark in the shape of a decorative “C” (probably for Champ-du-Moulin), which was stamped into the wet clay (see MAHN AA 1321; MAHN AA 1320; MAHN AA 2072).
The two vases donated by Théodore Delachaux that were more accomplished in style and technique (MAHN AA 1870; MAHN AA 2084), were only added in 1935 and labelled “first experiments by M. Diana, April 1901”. The old inventory cards of the museum also note that the shapes of both vases were created “by Clement Heaton” (1861–1940), the well-known stained-glass artist and decorator of English extraction who lived in Neuchâtel from 1893 to 1914.
Our enquiries at the registry office did not reveal any information about Vincent Diana’s dates of birth or death, or his period of residency in the region. A visit to Mr Maximilian Diana, Vincent’s nephew who still lives in Travers did not help us to fill in the gap in our knowledge. All we could confirm was that the Dianas, a family of emigrants from Brusnengo (Piedmont, Italy) lived for a time in France and Portugal before settling in Champ-du-Moulin where Vincent’s mother ran a restaurant as attested to by a book of accounts for 1869 in Mr Diana’s possession. He also owns approximately fifteen ceramic objects left to him by his uncle, including a signed biscuit-fired earthenware jug dated 1898. It is approximately 30 cm high and baluster-shaped, with a handle in the form of a frog. The rather complex shape was created by trimming it on a potter’s wheel. Another unglazed vase was decorated using a technique Vincent Diana employed on quite a few of his works: a moulded sprig was applied to the object, the finer details were skilfully added by hand and the entire vessel was then covered in a coat of coloured slip (see MAHN AA 1870; MAHN AA 2084).
The majority of pieces that we were able to study in Travers were small vases with simple elegant shapes, probably covered in a pink glaze and decorated with relatively simple geometric or vegetal motifs painted in blue, black and yellow, rather like those known from Dutch art nouveau. The background colour was in fact achieved by applying a coat of slip and then covering it with a semi-opaque glaze, while the motifs also seem to have been executed by applying coloured slip under the glaze. Most of these decorated and glazed objects are very clearly marked and dated: “V. Diana – Champ-du-Moulin – 15.XII.1900”. Like the objects housed at the MAHN, they too are characterised by experimentation, in that both the glaze and the decorative motifs under the glaze quite frequently exhibit firing defects.
Vincent Diana obviously had various shaping techniques down to a fine art: throwing, casting or jollying, and it is quite likely that he had already mastered these skills when he settled in Champ-du-Moulin, probably in the late 1890s. By contrast, he never truly mastered the technique of glazing. This may have been one of the reasons why he left the region in c. 1905 or 1906 and went to the Ticino to work in a pottery factory that had been established in Sementina in the district of Bellinzona in 1904 (Schweizerisches Handelsblatt, Vol. 22, 1904, p. 1354). Maximilian Diana has two objects in refined white earthenware that are stamped “Sementina”: a small art nouveau vase with three-dimensional plant motifs in polychrome underglaze painted decoration and a jug with the caricatured face of a boisterous rake or common man. Both are signed by Vincent Diana and bear the incised date 1907. According to Maximilian Diana, Vincent was a foreman in the pottery factory in Sementina, where he obviously designed some of the shapes, especially those that we were able to study in Travers. In Champ-du-Moulin, where he set up his workshop “on a plot of land that he did not own”, Vincent worked with his sister Clothilde and his brother Albert, Maximilian’s father. Albert followed his brother to Sementina, where he also worked in the pottery factory for a time.
Further research in Ticino archives may perhaps allow us to one day find out more about Vincent Diana’s life and career. He was most certainly an interesting ceramic artist whose undeniable talents obviously never quite bore fruit during his time in Neuchâtel.
Translation Sandy Haemmerle
References:
Blaettler/Ducret/Schnyder 2013
Roland Blaettler/Peter Ducret/Rudolf Schnyder, CERAMICA CH I: Neuchâtel (Inventaire national de la céramique dans les collections publiques suisses, 1500-1950), Sulgen 2013, 26-28, 500.
