Art & Statues
René Buthaud: 1886-1986
René Buthaud: 1886-1986
Written by Pierre Cruège with the collaboration of Anne Lajoix, this French language monograph is a comprehensive study of ceramicist René Buthaud, one of the most distinctive voices in French Art Deco pottery. Published in 1996 by Les Éditions de l'Amateur, the 203 page book traces Buthaud's career from his early training through his mature work, illustrated throughout with photographs of his vases, coupes, and statuettes. It draws on the artist's own archive, including workshop notebooks and family collections, to document his full body of work.
René Buthaud began his career as a painter and engraver before finding his true medium in ceramics, a shift the book traces back to his time working in the Bordeaux studio of the potter Taffet after the First World War. Cruège's text follows Buthaud as he moved beyond copying established ceramicists to develop a personal style built around mythological and historical subjects, stylized female figures rendered with a graphic, almost linear quality that set his work apart from more purely decorative Art Deco ceramics. Early influences from Persian art and Renaissance Italian faience appear throughout his pieces, subjects Buthaud discussed directly in interviews included in the text.
The book documents Buthaud's output in detail, from painted plates and vases decorated with animals and stylized foliage to the small ceramic statuettes he began producing later in his career for the Galerie Rouard in Paris. Workshop records reproduced in the book, including notebook pages and delivery logs, give a rare glimpse into how a working ceramicist's practice operated, down to the exact count of pieces delivered over decades. Cruège estimates that Buthaud produced roughly two hundred statuettes across his career, a scale of output that this book helps put into context against his broader body of painted ceramics.
As the definitive monograph on an artist whose reputation rests heavily on the strength of his ceramic work, this book draws together material that had previously existed only in family archives and private collections. For collectors of French Art Deco ceramics, Buthaud's pieces occupy a distinct niche shaped by his painterly background, and this book remains the primary reference for understanding both his technique and the full range of his output.
