I guess it’s pretty likely if not altogether true that when Jacques Sicard’s iridescent earthenware designs first hit the market in the 1910s, they were perceived as extremely novel, uniquely beautiful, and even strange in comparison to what was popular at the time. Iridescent objects were surely rare back then, outside of the natural world. In fact, I’m somewhat curious how Sicard developed such a technique. Those flickering, multicolored pots, vases, lamps, and tiles, whose swirling and often floral patterns look like the delicate shapes made by dropping oil onto the surface of water, must have been quite cool a hundred and ten years ago. To me, now, they sort of look like what Lisa Frank would have produced if her company had ever ventured into ceramics.
I find this impression of mine regrettable, because I wonder if it indicates that I lack the aesthetic knowledge or sophistication to find Sicard’s work beautiful. I mean, I love ceramics. I also love old things. I bet that if I were tripping on psychedelics, these vases would look like something from the beyond—earthenware made of the sky just before the sun sets. Actually, that sort of makes me wonder if that’s what Lisa Frank was thinking of when she designed all those saccharine, electric-colored graphics of tigers and rainbows. And actually, maybe this is how I redeem my uncouth parallel between Sicard’s work and Frank’s: perhaps both were thinking about what would happen if you looked into the night sky and tried to make it into something you could hold.
-Eugenie Dalland