Lladro': The Art of Porcelain (How Spanish Porcelain Became World Famous)

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The Lladro Brothers: Three Personalities and a Single work, Genesis of a Lladro Poercelain Work of Art, Aesthetics and themes in Lladro Porcelain, Customs and Everyday Life as a Basis for Expression, Dynamism: a Centuries-old Desire, Animals in Porcelain, A Universe of Stylized Characters, Romanticism in Porcelain, Inspiration in Literature, A Serene Devotion, An Immortal Legacy: the Genius of Orient, The Modesty of Nudes, Porcelain in the Service of Games and Design The setting up of a successful porcelain manufacture in post-war Europe is no mean achievement under any circumstances. To do so with very limited capital resources is doubly remarkable. This, however, is what the brothers Jose, Juan and Vicente Lladro have done. The first two trained at art college as painters and the last-named as a sculptor, and when in 1951 they started operations in Almacera with a wood-fired furnace such as would have been used by their moorish predecessors in medieval Valencia, they were at first constrained to exercise their talents on making the ceramic flowers which continue to play an important role in their production. An interesting comparison with the early days of the French factory at Vincennes which later became the royal manufacture of Sevres, and where porcelain flowers formed to some extent the bread-and-butter line of its early production. As the Lladro concern prospered, with an outlet in Valencia in 1955 and a new factory at Tabernes Blnques in 1958, it began to present the extremely rare aspect of a concern which concentrated almost exclusively on its produciton of ceramic figures, at the expense of those utilitarian wares which normally provide the back of a ceramic factory's commercial success. There are very few historical parallels indeed for such a state of affairs, and the emphasis reflects very much teh predominantly sculptural sympathies of the three bothers who provide the driving-force of this remarkable enterprise. Read more ( javascript:void(0) )