Taxile Doat’s ear of corn vase signed and dated 1906, $42,000 (£35,000) at Rago and Toomey & Co.
Art pottery was among their specialist areas of interest (they owned many pieces by the Biloxi, Mississippi potter George Ohr and championed his place in ceramics history) with one of the 87-lot sale’s top prices paid for this rare 10in (24cm) vase by the French ceramicist Taxile Doat (1851-1939).
Fashioned to resemble a peeled ear of corn with a pate-sur-pate medallion suspended via a piece of twine, it was exhibited at La Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1906 and illustrated in the ceramics and glass volume of the catalogue, The Paris Salons 1895-1914.
It later entered the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri but after deaccessioning in the post-war era, was acquired by Terry Kovel’s mother.
The mark to the Taxile Doat’s ear of corn vase that sold at Rago and Toomey & Co.
Doat worked at the Sevres factory from 1877 to 1905 and was one of the artists who introduced the Art Nouveau style, but this is one of the organic pots he produced under his own steam from a workshop at 47 rue Brancas in the village of Sevres.
Several glaze treatments of the vase are known. Estimated at $10,000-15,000, the vase sold at $42,000 (£35,000).
