Champy Claude (1944), Large Sandstone Vase, Signed, 20th Century

Large ovoid-shaped vase with a slightly hemmed neck in stoneware with a nuanced green glaze, piece made in the 1980s, signed underneath. 20th century period. Claude Champy was born on September 12, 1944. He has lived ever since in Plaisir, where his family has been established for several generations [...]. He likes to recall that his grandfather was mayor of this commune, which he himself knew as rural in his youth and which has today become one of the components of the greater Parisian suburbs. He recalls in 8 Artists & the Earth how, as a teenager, he discovered by chance a series of books by Henri Perruchot on the lives of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, which instilled in him an unwavering vocation as a painter1. Later, the realization, thanks to the Far East, that ceramics can also be "author's", made him see the earth as a place of expression just as worthy as painting [...]. In 1963, Claude Champy did not obtain his baccalaureate and his parents allowed him to pursue the artistic career he dreamed of. Thus, after a year of preparation at Penninghen and Dandon's studio, he followed the training of the Ecole des métiers d'art in Paris from 1964 to 1968 […] now transformed into the Ecole nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d'art […]. At the time, it included several workshops and a hierarchical course beginning with work in drawing, plaster, molds, casting… under the direction of Roger Waechter. The final year, more particularly focused on the question of enamel, was carried out under the leadership of the ceramist Pierre Fouquet who had control over the “furnace room”, a sort of holy of holies where “one had the impression that something was happening”2. Champy took advantage of these infrastructures, in particular, to carry out hundreds of glaze tests. In those years, a trip to La Borne was a must for young ceramists: Claude Champy made it in 1965. He recounts this episode in several tones but always with the serious and joyful warmth that is generally reserved for founding moments. The resulting encounters with Yves Mohy, Jean Linard, Anne Kjærsgaard, Elisabeth Joulia, Rémi Bonhert, Hildegund Schlichenmaier, Vassil Ivanoff, Jean and Jacqueline Lerat were significant. But it was above all the vision of a firing at 1300° in a wood-fired kiln, at Mestre, that acted as a detonator for him. What he liked above all was "a rich and honest way of life"4…"