Joseph Mougin
Joseph Mougin produced pottery that in many ways epitomizes the foliate Nancy style. Although he had trained to be a sculptor, his plans changed when in 1897 he visited a posthumous exhibition of stoneware by Jean Carriès. Between 1897 and 1903 Mougin, his friend Charles Lemarquier, and possibly his younger brother, Pierre, struggled to build a functioning kiln. Despite persistent technical obstacles, Mougin produced a small but important body of ceramic sculptures by 1900.
Mougin could have encountered the illustrations in Ernst Haeckel's book, Art Forms in Nature (published in Leipzig between 1899 and 1904). Haeckel's color lithographs of plant, animal, and microbial life were widely influential in fin-de-siècle artistic circles. Some of Mougin's ceramics are thought to bear a striking resemblance to a phylum of marine microbes known as spyroidea, which are illustrated in Haeckel's book.
Mougin also worked in collaboration with other members of the École de Nancy including Ernest Bussiére and Jacques Gruber. Together, the men exhibited stoneware in Art Nouveau styles in Paris and Nancy until WWI. After the war, Mougin established a studio at the faience works in Luneville. After winning the Gran Prix de la Ceramique at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1925, he left Luneville and returned to his Nancy studio, where he resumed production in 1936, helped in business by his daughter Odile and son François until his retirement in 1960.
