‘Vase Charpin No 2’ 2026
Fabienne Verdier
‘Vase Charpin’ No. 2 by Fabienne Verdier
COURTESY: Fabienne Verdier, Manufacture de Sèvres © Audrey Falet
This vase, an entirely hybrid object, is brought to ecstatic life by the vigorous brush work of French painter, Fabienne Verdier. It is the product of a unique collaboration, supported by the insurance company AXA Group, between Verdier and the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. It is one of the more than one hundred pieces to emerge from this collaboration, which will be on view for the first time to the public at Fine Arts Paris 2026.
The Manufacture de Sèvres was founded in 1740 as the Manufacture de Vincennes to feed the porcelain passion of Queen Marie Leszczyńska, the Polish-born wife of Louis XV. Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, another fan, persuaded the manufactory to move to a new purpose-built building in Sèvres, near her Château de Bellevue, in 1756. Three years later, Louis XV obliged her by buying the manufactory, since when it has been in the ownership of the French state. In 1875, the institution moved to new buildings, specially built by the French state, next to the Parc de Saint-Cloud.
Since an initial collaboration with François Boucher in 1749, the manufactory has always worked both with the many moulds in its collection and with contemporary artists and artisans. In 2008, the designer Pierre Charpin was commissioned to produce several new shapes, to replenish the store as there had been no new moulds since the 1950s, and artistic collaborations had lapsed. Charpin’s success in drawing on traditional elements within the Sèvres design language to produce elegant, contemporary forms, glazed in the iconic Sèvres Blue, reignited the organisation’s enthusiasm for working with contemporary designers and artists.
Fabienne Verdier at work, Manufacture de Sèvres
COURTESY: Fabienne Verdier, Manufacture de Sèvres © Laura Stevens
Last year Verdier was invited to bring her own artistic vision to Sèvres porcelain. A painter of persistent originality, her visual language is grounded in her long apprenticeship in traditional Chinese calligraphy allied to a love of Flemish primitive paintings and post-war abstraction. Her imagination, deeply rooted in the landscape of Brittany where she was raised, and fed by her wide-ranging travels, from China to the wide Saint Lawrence River in Québec, seeks out movement and the traces of forces that shape our universe. Critical to the way she works are the tools and processes she has invented – giant paint brushes on rigs, glaze alloys, filmic sketches – that allow her to capture the dynamism of the living world.
Fabienne Verdier at work, Manufacture de Sèvres
COURTESY: Fabienne Verdier, Manufacture de Sèvres © Laura Stevens
For this project, painting on a smaller scale, in three dimensions, on porcelain, with enamel colours more viscous than her usual paint, she has worked with the craftswomen of the background-painting workshop to develop new methods. Here she has found materials and gestures that still enable her to embody and express the energy of creation.
Elements of the creative process, Fabienne Verdier, Manufacture de Sèvres
COURTESY: Fabienne Verdier, Manufacture de Sèvres © Laura Stevens
For this vase in particular, she has turned the intense, still, dark blue of Charpin’s vases (achieved through the patient application of cobalt in three layers using a traditional technique to eliminate brush marks) into a thrilling, fluid medium, capturing a moment of action for eternity.
‘Vase Charpin No 2’ 2026 is exhibited at The Fine Arts Paris at the Grand Palais (19-23 September)
