Ceramics collection

Designed to fulfill a triple function, that of representation, a place of political decision and a place of culture, Peleș Castle, the royal summer residence, remains one of the most important museums in Romania due to the variety and special value of the collections that make up it. Alongside the famous painting collection that included over 200 paintings, King Carol I laid the foundations of a remarkable collection of decorative art, gradually built up over half a century of his reign, through important acquisitions of furniture, weapons, tapestries and carpets, pieces of precious metal, glassware and ceramics, creations of the most famous workshops and manufactures of the era.

Within this vast artistic project, the ceramic collection (stoneware, faience, porcelain) of Peleș Castle occupies a well-defined place, both in number (the collection consists of over 5,000 pieces) and in value (the ceramic pieces honor the authors and European and Eastern ceramic centers fashionable in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as older workshops).

Passionate about beauty, which she made a true credo of, Queen Maria (1914-1927) continued the collecting tradition inaugurated by King Carol I and acquired pieces of Art Nouveau ceramics, which she distributed with great aesthetic sense in the unusual decor of Pelișor Castle, her private residence.

In the 1970s, in the midst of the communist regime, the Peleș Museum initiated a real program of acquiring pieces of art from private individuals or from antique shops, adding a significant value to the already established collection.

Driven by the idea of the necessity of composing a space worthy of representing the young Monarchy, King Carol I managed to create in Sinaia, as in the capital, one of the most cohesive collections of decorative art, unprecedented in our cultural history. Purchased either from abroad, directly from workshops or during visits to the Universal Exhibitions in Paris, London or Vienna, or from private collections belonging to local and foreign aristocracy or from specialized distribution companies, the ceramic pieces in the Peleș Castle collection celebrate the good taste, variety and craftsmanship of artists of yesteryear.

Although Carol I preferred imitation European faience for his summer residence, oriental ceramics represent a valuable segment of the collection. Acquired gradually, since the first years after his arrival in Romania, the oriental pieces happily complete the eclectic atmosphere of the Castle. Alongside the Chinese vessels from the 18th-19th centuries, from the "green family", "blue-white" and "brown de Chine", masterfully decorated with narrative scenes of great intensity, there are several refined Celadon vessels from the 18th century. The Japanese ceramics from the famous Imari-Arita and Satsuma workshops are distinguished by their decorative and chromatic richness, as well as by the variety of forms: decorative plates and vases. In general, the far-oriental ceramic pieces were purchased from the Constantinople market through the Maltese documentary painter, Amedeo Preziosi (1816-1882).

Persian ceramics are illustrated by several 17th and 18th century grease pots, representative of the ceramics of the Safavid era (1502-1736). The pieces are characterized by the fineness of the bright and semi-transparent turquoise glaze as well as by the precision of the stylized design. The summary of the journey through the oriental ceramic workshops concludes with the Turkish mass-produced ceramics of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, manufactured by the famous Iznik workshop, remarkable for the beauty and symmetry of the floral and geometric decoration, as well as for the vivid and varied chromatics.

European ceramics constitute the core of the collection and are defined by a great stylistic diversity. Within the European segment, 19th century faience occupies a central place because it was the bearer of the historical and ideological values of the Renaissance era. Spanish ceramics are illustrated by various pieces, decorated with heraldic motifs in dark tones of cobalt blue or ochre, created by the Toledo and Talavera workshops.

Italian majolica, widely circulated throughout Europe, enjoys a consistent representation, both from the point of view of famous ceramic centers, as well as of the typology developed in the Peninsula and of the decorative motifs specific to each manufacture. Moreover, in the 19th century, Italian ceramics managed to conquer the market, with European Courts becoming the main customers. The fashion for ceramics à l'ancienne, with deep roots in the Renaissance, promoted by Italian ceramic masters, also successfully established itself at the court of King Carol I. The sovereign's choices were largely influenced by the artistic education received within his family in Sigmaringen. Ceramics copies or draws inspiration from the spectacular forms of the 15th – 16th centuries, the pieces of Luca della Robbia, amphorae with snake handles, pharmacy vessels, trilobed cups, decorative plates and adapts the decorations of the Raffaelesque, the grotesque, the istoriato, the coppa d'amore, the bella donna, etc., to the new technical conquests recorded until the historicist century.

In 1873, the Society of Friends of Fine Arts organized its first exhibition in Bucharest. In addition to valuable pieces of plastic art, furniture, weapons, and coins, ceramic objects from various private collections were exhibited for the first time, along with historical Italian majolica vessels. The gesture spoke of the Romanian sovereign's predilection for Tuscan faience and its spirit of glorifying the past.

The Italian faience collection of Peleș Castle includes significant pieces from all the workshops established in the era: Ginori, Caffaggiolo, Torelli, Cantagalli, Faenza, Deruta, Savona, Gubbio, Orvietto, Nove, Capodimonte and Urbino. The decorative motifs typical of the Urbino and Faenza workshops, crystallized since the 16th century, are integrated into the decorative repertoire of Faenza or Ginori pieces. The most important suppliers of the Romanian Royal House are Alberto Issel from Genoa, in 1884, 1885, Moise della Torre&Co. from Florence, in 1911 and Manifattura di Signa, Terrecotte artistiche from Florence in 1912, etc. Along with the historical pieces, the royal collection includes several original pieces of great refinement, dating from the 16th-17th centuries.

Influenced by Italian ceramics, historical faience of French origin borrows and adapts the decorations established in Italy and circulates under the generic name of faience à la venitienne. In the royal collection at Peleș Castle, Carol I included valuable pieces created by the workshops of Rouen, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Saint-Cloud, Paris, Moustiers, Sarreguemines, as well as successful reproductions of the naturalistic pieces created by Bernard Palissy in the 16th century. As for French porcelain, the pieces in the museum's collection are either copies of valuable models, created by the most famous workshops in France, such as Sèvres, Paris, Saint-Cloud and Chantilly, or historical productions of great refinement. Stylistically, French porcelain covers a whole range of styles, from chinaware, to figurines and vases in the Rococo, Neoclassical and Empire styles, reaching Art Nouveau, a current masterfully represented by the pieces imagined by Clément Massier in 1900, the designer of the Golfe Juan workshop, in the Maritime Alps. Royal orders were addressed to famous shops such as Au vase etrusque. Faïances artistiques in Paris, in 1869, the Jules Houry firms. Specialité de porcelaines et faïences d'art, in 1873 and Louise Cellière. Céramique centrale. Faïences françaises, in 1879, etc.

Economic and cultural contacts with France and Italy led to the development of a distinctive ceramic art in Germany, which draws inspiration from established Renaissance and Baroque decorative motifs but adapts them to German forms and spirit. The country where porcelain was invented is the most richly valued in the royal collection, a fact that can be explained, of course, by the very origin of the sovereigns, but also by the extraordinary variety of ceramic production developed in the 19th century. The castle's German porcelain collection includes valuable pieces created in the established workshops of Meissen, Nymphenburg, Ilmenau, Rosenthal, Volkstedt, Villeroi&Boch Mettlach, Lönitz, Hamburg, Berlin, Grenzhauser, Villingen, Frankenthal, etc.

The national movement after 1871 to reawaken the consciousness of Germanness also determined in this field the resumption of the production of imitation Westerwald stoneware, with its peak in the 16th century. Characterized by reduced polychromy (blue, white, gray), by its rough and opaque appearance, by its relief decoration, as well as by the wide diffusion of the Bellarmini vessel typology, 19th-century Westerwald-style ceramics enjoy a wide representation in the royal collection.

The German porcelain in the royal collection is characterized by typological variety and artistic quality. Alongside the inspired figurines of the Meissen workshop - some of them copies of the great artists of the 18th century, such as Johann Joachim Kändler, the famous German sculptor and the most important porcelain modeler in Böttger's workshop, there are pieces from Ilmenau, Rosenthal and Nymphenburg: tea services, tableware, brûlle-parfume vases, decorative plates, etc. German exporters included Kunstgewerbe, Werkstatt des Architecten R. Bichweiler in Hamburg, Königliche Hof–Kunst–Anstalt von CW Fleischmann in Nuremberg, E. Crauer in Creuznach in 1881, J. von Schwartz, Artistische-Fajance und Terracotta-Fabrik in Leipzig in 1884, Julius Lange, Glass, Porzellan und Majolica-Waaren-Lager in Berlin in 1885, and Bayerische Kunstgewerbe -Verein of Munich, in 1896.

The German ceramics in the royal collection are joined by the famous Dutch Delft vases from the 18th and 19th centuries, worked in camaïeu, inspired by Far Eastern decorative motifs, as well as fine porcelains manufactured in Austria, Vienna or in Bohemian centers, such as Pirkenhammer, the porcelain factory that still operates today. One of the most prolific suppliers of Austrian ceramics to the Romanian Royal House was the firm Carlo Vanni, in 1869 and 1872, Fabrik von Rococo-Schmuck und Kunst-Gegenständen, in 1872, Münzen Antiquitäten, in 1872 and J. Weidman in 1900, all firms from Vienna.

The English ceramics in the royal collection come from the workshops of Wedgwood, Tunstall, Minton, Johnson Bros, Copeland and Doulton-Lambeth, in London. An imitation of German ceramics, especially stoneware, Chinese porcelain and the typology of silver pieces, English ceramics gradually acquire originality and value, becoming an art in its own right. At the beginning of the 19th century, Josiah Spode II, an 18th-century master ceramist in Stoke-upon-Trent, combines Chinese clay, stoneware and glaze and obtains bone china, which imitates porcelain, but is cheaper. King Charles I acquires most of the English pieces through Theodor Held in London. The company WPLG Philips, China and Glass Manufactures in the capital of the United Kingdom also supplies the Romanian sovereign with Minton faience.

Copenhagen vases and animal figurines, Hungarian Arta 1900 pieces, mass-produced washbasin services created by the Szolnay-Pecs and Fischer manufactories, large Russian vases, manufactured in Moscow and St. Petersburg, although reduced in number, give the collection great diversity. The royal collection includes several pieces of everyday use alongside replicas of old German stoneware, manufactured in Bucharest or Transylvania workshops.
Intended to add color to royal interiors, the ceramics from Peleș and Pelișor castles are part of the national heritage as one of the most important and coherent collections of decorative art in Romania.