Hector Guimard
Best known to the general public for his instantly recognizable Paris Metro entrances, it is generally agreed that Hector Guimard introduced the Art Nouveau style to French architectural ironwork. His organic aesthetic also informed his ceramics, albeit on a smaller scale. For example, his Vase de Cerny, executed by the Sèvres National Manufactory, features a subtly ribbed columnar body that suggests a tight cluster of stalks, rising from an irregularly splayed base and terminating at the rim in a tangle of asymmetrical curves. The energetic twists and turns of the crowning forms seem to represent the moment just before first bloom. It is as full of potential as anything on the verge of change, thereby a particularly appropriate design at the beginning of a new century.
