Trompe l'Oeil Plate, Mandarin Decoration, Signed Christine Viennet - 20th Century

A trompe-l'oeil plate decorated with mandarins, a beautiful piece by Christine Viennet, a signed work. A French-Norwegian ceramicist and artist born in Norway in 1947, she first studied at the Oslo School of Fine Arts, then trained with two renowned Norwegian ceramicists, Rolf Hansen and Bente von Krogh. Between 1965 and 1971, she worked in France with Father Paoli at the Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, as well as in the textile workshops of Lurçat and Picart Le Doux in Perpignan. Her first exhibition took place in Paris in 1971, followed by numerous international exhibitions and shows. Deeply influenced by the famous Renaissance naturalist ceramicist Bernard Palissy, she creates abundant works depicting fauna, flora, animals, plants, and marine elements, blending realism and imagination. From 1975, she specialized in ceramic trompe-l'œil, handcrafting dishes and sculptures that reproduced fruits, vegetables, fish, and flowers with striking realism. Since the 2000s, she has further explored imaginary marine worlds, creating jellyfish, seaweed, and fantastical creatures modeled in clay, stoneware, or porcelain. In 1990, she founded a ceramics museum showcasing a significant collection of works inspired by Palissy, as well as a collection of 19th-century European tableware.