H: 0,74m / 11in ½ diam: 0,93 cm / 14 in 1/2

This very rare pedestal table with a central shaft decorated in the lower part with small patinated bronze palmettes stands on a tripod foot. The top is decorated with a sumptuous enamelled lava plaque with a pink background, decorated with flowers and garlands of polychrome flowers. This plate is set with a mahogany band.

Very few testimonies of this technique have come down to us, although it was praised from the outset for its perfect and unalterable finish.

 Hachette et Cie

Pierre Hachette, described as a painter on lava and porcelain, lived on rue du Faubourg Saint Martin, no. 124, when he died on 9 November 1847. As is traditional at the time of the death of a craftsman, an inventory of his business is made and in the case of Pierre Hachette the evaluation of the business is very interesting since it says the following: " the experts invited to give their opinion, their estimate to be fixed for the business of painter on lava and on porcelain whose material has just been inventoried and declared that the industry of M. Hachette's industry consisted solely of the exploitation of an artistic and purely personal process, and that consequently it was not susceptible of any evaluation.

Pierre Hachette had married Adélaide Marie Dubois, who was none other than the daughter of Ferdinand Henri Joseph Mortelecque, a chemist living in Faubourg Saint Martin No. 132 (who died on 12 August 1842). Count Chabrol de Volvic, an engineer from the Ponts et Chaussées (1773 - 1843), very interested in promoting industry in his region, supported by the prefect, both took an interest in the work of

Ferdinand Mortelecque had been working on enamel techniques for a long time. He developed a technique of enamel painting on lava in the years 1827-28. It was based on a double firing: the lava plate coated with a first layer of paint went into the oven, on this background which played the role of a preparation, the colours were applied and the plate underwent a second firing.

This application of a durable enamel on lava opened up a new career for monumental painting: the church of Notre Dame de Lorette in 1834 was adorned with these plates on the altars, followed by the decoration on its façade behind the colonnade of the church of Saint Vincent de Paul.

That same year, 1834, the report "of the central jury on the products of French industry" gave a silver medal to M. Hachette-Hittorff et Cie in Paris, rue Coquenard n°40, saying: " the art whose importance we have just pointed out after a great development in the hands of M. Hachette, son-in-law of M. Morteleque, to whom the latter has ceded the exploitation. Mr. Hachette has submitted to the exhibition a fine collection of furniture and ornaments in enamelled lava, painted according to the processes we have just indicated and according to the drawings of Mr. Hittorff, director of this new manufacture".

40 rue Coquenard (which became rue Lamartine in 1848) is the address of Jacques Ignace Hittorff, architect and member of the Institute, where he died on 25 March 1867.

In 1848, the widow Hachette entrusted the management of the company to François Gillet, and the company was finally closed in 1869.

The enamelled lava technique

In 1791, the first French patent concerning lava painting was registered by Louis-François Ollivier, a ceramist by trade. He may be considered to have had the idea of enamelling rocks.

It was also at this time that a market was born: the identification of the streets of Paris.

In 1827 and 1828 many patents were filed on the subject of enamelled lava, but none of them brought any technical improvement.

In 1828, it was decided to use enamelled lava for the street signs in Paris and this first contract was awarded to the Hachette company.

The exploitation of the andesite quarries of the Nugère volcano, located near the village of Volvic, is very old, but its fame dates from the middle of the 13th century with the building of the cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand. Easy to cut, very resistant, it can be cut in large dimensions, hence its use in the decorative arts.

To decorate a plate like this, a pencil drawing is created directly on the lava plate. When the enamel is then applied with a brush or bulb, it is stopped by the carbon, which makes it possible to delimit areas of different colours. When applied to an already fired enamel base, this technique allows for finer brushwork than cloisonné. The glazed colours have a rendering similar to that of a paint, but with the added resistance.

A panel in enamelled lava presented at the Exhibition of Industrial Products in 1834 made a journalist say: "enamelled painting on lava leaves little to be desired in terms of material perfection, and it seems impossible to give the colours more brilliance, the material more solidity, since these two qualities necessarily result, one from the vitrification of the enamel, the other from the intensity of a fire sustained for several days in the state of incandescence;

Alexandre Brogniart, who was building up the ceramics museum, wanted to have samples of this material. The architect Hittorff offered a table top in the Gothic style. Another tray decorated with shells, the work of Ferdinand Morteleque, exhibited in 1827, is also in the collections of the Musée national de la Céramique.