‘Memorial Lecture on Mr. M. L. E. Solon’ from Transactions of the English Ceramic Society, Vol. XIV

1914-15

Mellor Papers, Box 1

[Stoke-on-Trent: English Ceramic Society]

Louis Marc Solon (1835-1913) trained as an artist at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and moved to Stoke-on-Trent in 1870 where he worked for the pottery firm Minton’s Ltd. Solon refined the pâte-sur-pâte (lit. paste-on-paste) technique of building up, with white slip or liquid clay, a relief image or cameo effect on a pot’s surface. He became a master and created a vase for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1887, which sold for over five million dollars (US) in 2006. Although Mellor and Solon were friends, it was a volatile good-hearted relationship. Mellor said at a memorial lecture of Solon that ‘one of his favourite arguments [was]…that science was all bosh….I had then to demonstrate that art was all flap-doodle’.