North African Crafts under Colonial Status, c. 1900: The Case of Pottery in Tunisia and Algeria

Abstract

This article considers parallel approaches to ceramic craft revival, attempted at the same time in Algeria and Tunisia under French colonial administration. It compares two men – Georges Marye and Elie Blondel – who had idealist visions for the revival of glazed ceramics industries, both of which ultimately failed. In Algeria, where the craft was non-existent by the late nineteenth century, Marye proposed a revival of the industry based on tradition, without imposing European models and training, but this was misunderstood by the colonial authorities. In Tunisia, on the other hand, guilds still operated and glazed ceramics, especially tiles, were regularly shown in salons and international exhibitions. Blondel joined forces with the intellectual Jacob Chemla, and together they spent years experimenting in order to reinvent the iconic color of the Qallaline tiles of the eighteenth century. Their approach was a matter of ethnographic enquiry and the development of a training infrastructure, rather than an attempt to produce art objects for commercial ends. But it was slow and expensive compared to the competition from more mechanised, European-influenced processes that the colonial administration favored. While Blondel was unsuccessful in his goal, the project was continued by Chemla and became iconic in its own right; today Chemla ceramics are symbols of Tunisian national identity.

Keywords:

• colonial Maghrib, crafts
• Moorish revival architecture
• Orientalist tiles
• tradition
• Qallaline

Notes

1 The author would like to thank Julia Bailey and Sarah Piram for translating this article from the original French.

2 Significant European potters were inspired by the most prestigious Islamic pottery, such as Théodore Deck (1823-1891) by Iznik pottery, and William De Morgan (1839-1917) by lusterware. See Rémi Labrusse, “Pratiques. ‘Renaissance orientale,’ les ambigüités d’un mythe,” in Islamophilies. L’Europe moderne et les arts de l’Islam (Paris: Somogy Éditions d’Art, 2011), 261-285.

3 The factory owned an important collection of Oriental carpets, including the two Persian carpets from Albert Goupil collection which had been shown at the Carré Salon at the end of the twentieth century; this Salon assembled “les plus beaux échantillons du musée.” See Jules Guiffrey, Les Gobelins et Beauvais: les manufactures nationales de tapisseries (Paris: H. Laurens, 1908), 92.

4 Clara I. Álvarez Dopico, “Tradition et rénovation dans la production céramique tunisienne d’époque coloniale. Le cas d’Élie Blondel, le Bernard Palissy africain (1897-1910),” in Villes maghrébines en situations coloniales, ed. Charlotte Jelidi (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2014), 223-249, 226.

5 Clara I. Álvarez Dopico, Qallaline. Les revêtements en céramique des fondations beylicales tunisoises du xviii^e siècle (PhD diss., Université Sorbonne – Paris IV, 2010).

6 Henri Klein, “À la villa du Traité,” L’Afrique du Nord illustrée 25, no. 501 (December 6, 1930): 6. The description of the work done at Dar Raïs or Villa du Traité illustrates the perception by their contemporaries of these reconstruction works.

7 From 1860 the authorities carried out an ambitious program of layout and alignment of streets inside the old Ottoman city. For this reason, many houses were expropriated and demolished. This allowed the recovery of materials, especially tiles, and their subsequent reuse. It is the case of Randon Street (now Amar-Ali Street) opened from 1862 in the Kasbah of Algiers, in the heart of the Jewish quarter. Randon Street led to the great synagogue built in 1865. See Claudine Piaton and Thierry Lochard, “Architectures et propriétaires algérois, 1830-1870”, in Propriété et société en Algérie contemporaine. Quelles approches? ed. Didier Guignard (Aix-en-Provence: IREMAM, 2017), 115-140.

8 Jean Cotereau, “La maison mauresque,” Chantiers nord-africains (June 1930): 586-587. Between December 1929 and April 1931, Cotereau published a series of articles in this magazine, under the general title, “Vers une architecture méditerranéenne.” In these articles, he considered vernacular built heritage to be the main source for the conception of a new architecture in the region.

9 Even today many of the Ottoman houses on the fahs of Algiers are preserved. The terms djenan (ar. jinan) and bordj (ar. burj) refer to sumptuous palaces linked to farms, while dar are more modest houses.

10 Marion Vidal-Bué, Villas et palais d’Alger du xviii^e siècle à nos jours (Paris: Éditions Place des Victoires, 2012), 179-182. Several pieces from Benjamin Bucknall’s collection are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

11 Henri Klein, “Visites et excursions des années 1912-1913,” Feuillets d’El-Djezaïr no. 7 (1914): 37-38. The generic label “Persian” was long employed by Western collectors to designate Islamic ceramics in general since their precise production sites were not known. The tile panels from Rhodes to which Henri Klein alludes could be examples of Iznik production: the label “Rhodes ceramics” has its origin in the Iznik dishes discovered in houses on Rhodes by Auguste Salzmann (1824-1872), which were acquired by the Musée de Cluny in 1865-1866, where they were exhibited in 1878, and which are now on display in the Musée de la Renaissance at the Château d’Ecouen. But few specimens of Iznik tiles are preserved in Algiers. The context and the historic photographs (since the house is not accessible) suggest that the author attributes different origins to the same production, that is, the Tunisian tiles of Qallaline that abound in the Ottoman regency of Algiers.

12 On the Lung Collection, see Jean Alazard, “La collection Frédéric Lung,” Études d’Art publiées par le Musée National des Beaux-arts d’Alger, 6 (1951): 59-71; and Bernard Dorival, “Musée National d’Art Moderne. La donation Lung,” La Revue du Louvre et des musées de France 11, no. 3 (1961): 148-152.

13 Anonymous, “Le Bordj Polignac à Bouzaréa,” L’Afrique du Nord illustrée (September 1934): 1-3.

14 Élisabeth Cazenave, Les artistes de l’Algérie: dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, 1830-1962 (Paris: Éditions de l’Onde, 2001), 412.

15 André Mailho, “Chez Rochegrosse,” Hermès: Revue philosophique et littéraire bimensuelle, 1 (May 25, 1904): 23.

16 Arsène Alexandre, Réflexions sur les arts et les industries d’art en Algérie (Alger: Éditions de l’Akhbar, 1907), 34. Arsène Alexandre (1859-1937), collector and prolific writer, was a respected art critic for Le Figaro in Paris. He acted as a general inspector of museums during the First World War. Alexandre was a strong supporter of traditional handicrafts and proposed a series of initiatives to revitalize and boost local traditional industries. Concerned about the state of the visual arts in the colony, Governor Charles Jonnart commissioned him to produce an independent report. Alexandre’s “Réflexions sur les arts et les industries d’art en Algérie”, published in the weekly L’Akhbar beginning 15 February 1905, became an influential document in the development of art in Algiers.

17 Georges Marye, 1893. Exposition d’Art Musulman. Palais de l’Industrie, Champs-Élysées. Catalogue Officiel (Paris: Imprimerie A. Bellier et Cie, 1893): 12; and “L’Exposition d’Art Musulman,” Gazette des beaux-arts, 10 (December 1893): 490-499 and vol. 11 (January 1894): 54-72.

18 Georges Marye, “Un musée d’Art musulman à Alger,” Bulletin des musées 2, no. 23-24 (December 1891 - January 1892): 448. On the museum’s collections, see Georges Marye and Just Wierzejski, Musée national des antiquités algériennes. Catalogue (Alger: S. Léon Éditeur, 1899).

19 Georges Marye, “Les industries indigènes en Algérie,” Revue illustrée, 14 (1 July 1902): s. p.

20 Émile Violard, De la céramique berbère. Rapport adressé à M. le Gouverneur general de l’Algérie à la suite d’une mission en Kabylie (Alger: Imprimerie de P. Fontana, 1897).

21 Émile Violard, “La céramique indigène en Algérie,” La céramique, la verrerie. Journal officiel de la chambre syndicale (June 1902): 46. See also the echoes of this project in Art et décoration 4 (1898): 202-206.

22 For a more detailed study, see Clara I. Álvarez Dopico, “Une nouvelle tradition: la céramique algéroise à l’aube du xx^e siècle. À propos de la politique de rénovation artisanale de Georges Marye,” ABE Journal. Architecture Beyond Europe, 13 (2018).

23 Marcel Charrol, “Conférence de M. G. Blondel sur les industries tunsiennes,” Revue de Géographie Commerciale. Société de géographie commerciale de Bordeaux, 32 (1909): 293-295.

24 On Nabeul ceramics in the twentieth century, see the classic work of Pierre Lisse and André Louis, Les potiers de Nabeul. Étude de sociologie tunisienne (Tunis: IBLA, 1956), as well as Alain and Dalida Loviconi, Faïences de Tunisie. Qallaline et Nabeul (Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1994). More recently, Christian Hongrois, Les maîtres potiers de Nabeul (Le Mans: La Reinette, 2011).

25 Álvarez Dopico, “Tradition et renovation.”

26 In the same way that Blondel collaborated for a decade with the last potters of the medina of Tunis to try to revitalize this guild, the Service des Antiquités, Beaux-arts et Monuments historiques of the French Protectorate in Morocco (from 1912) worked with Moroccan master craftsmen (ma’alems) to preserve tradition. See Nadège Theilborie, “La patrimonialisation du Maroc, entre tradition et rupture de l’héritage français,” Livraisons d’Histoire de l’Architecture, 23 (2012): 115-119; and Mylène Théliol, “Le Service des beaux-arts, antiquités et monuments historiques, clef de voûte de la politique patrimoniale française au Maroc sous la residence de Lyautay (1912-1925),” Outre-Mers. Revue d’histoire, 370-371 (2011): 185-193.

27 Jacques Chemla, Monique Goffard and Lucette Valensi, Un siècle de céramique d’art en Tunisie. Les fils de J. Chemla (Paris: Éditions de l’Éclat, 2015).

28 The service for the Indigenous arts of the French Protectorate in Morocco had as its mission the renovation of crafts and the development of museums for the education of artisans. On the role of Prosper Ricard see Muriel Girard, “Invention de la tradition et authenticité sous le Protectorat au Maroc. L’action du Service des Arts indigènes et de son directeur Prosper Ricard,” Socio-Anthropologie, 19 (2006); and James Pardee Mokhiber, “The French ‘Protectorate of the arts’: Prosper Ricard and arts ‘renovation’ policy in Morocco, 1912-1939,” in Native Arts and Empire: The ‘Renovation’ of Artisanal Production in French Colonial North Africa, 1900-1939 (PhD diss, Johns Hopkins University, 2001).

29 Prosper Ricard, “Nécrologie – M. Blondel,” Bulletin de l’Enseignement Public 27-28 (1921): 253-255.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Clara Ilham Álvarez Dopico

The author holds a PhD in Islamic Art and Archeology at the Sorbonne University of Paris (2010), and has received the André Chastel - postdoctoral fellowship at Villa Medici of Rome (2011), and the Marie Curie – Clarin Cofund fellowship at Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art of Paris (2014-2017). She is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the University of Oviedo (Spain). Álvarez Dopico specializes in the Ottoman Maghrib, with a particular interest in modern and contemporary North African crafts.