This edition, from September 11-17, will be the 10th staging of the shop-based event, mostly run by and for the Paris ceramic galleries concentrated south of the Seine in the Carré Rive Gauche area, which encourages visitors to browse at their leisure.
It is also the 20th anniversary of the Association des Spécialistes de la Céramique de Collection, which organises the event and the lecture series that has always been a major feature of the Parcours.
To mark this double, the association is financing the publication of a new book on ceramics from the Château de Saumur by Antoinette Hallé, former director of the Sèvres Museum, and art historian Christine Lahaussois.
Mme Lahaussois will launch the lecture series with a talk on the ceramic legacy of Comte Lair, whose eclectic collection was left to the city of Saumur in 1919 and has been housed in the château since 1922.
At the same time the Parcours will host a special loan exhibition of around 1200 pieces from the Lair collection.
Lectures run throughout the week and are held in the Bistrot de Paris on the rue de Lille.
Dealers in antique ceramics, such as founder-members Christian Béalu and Vincent l’Herrou, have been the mainstay of the Parcours since its inception and this year Paris welcomes one of the France’s longest-established regional dealerships: Galerie Métais from Rouen.
Christine Métais is a fifth-generation dealer from a firm founded in the 1860s. She will be bringing a very rare soft-paste porcelain salt cellar by Rouen maker Louis Poterat which is thought to be among the earliest of all French porcelain.
Alongside the traditionalists, this year nine of the 24 participating dealers will be offering contemporary ceramics.
Flâner au Carré
It is not just tribal art and ceramics that will be flexing their muscles on the Left Bank antiques quarter in September.
The streets in this area are home to a vast number of galleries selling all kinds of art, design, furniture and works of art, books, bibelots and much more.
The 100-plus dealers in the network of streets known as the Carré Rive Gauche, the area bounded by the Quai Voltaire and the rues de Bac; Saint Perès and l’Université, are joining forces with the Parcours de la Céramique (many of whose shops are in the same area).
From September 7-16 they are encouraging visitors to ‘flâner au Carré’ (stroll round the area), with the bonus of a late-night opening on September 12 until 10pm.
