Lava painting

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Lavamalerei , also painted enamel on lava , French peinture émaillée sur lave or émaillage lave sur is an applied especially in the 19th century form of enamel painting on lava plates.

history

At the beginning of the 19th century, lava slabs ( pierre de Volvic ) were produced in the quarries of Volvic , which, supported by Gaspard de Chabrol , were mainly used to pave streets and squares in Paris. The easy fusibility of this lava, its easy vitrification and its porosity suggested that it could be enamelled permanently. First attempts confirmed this assumption. The first products of enamel painting were Paris street signs.

The porcelain painter Ferdinand Henry Mortelèque, who had been involved in the preparation and use of vitrifiable paints for many years, was commissioned to determine the best method for permanently enamelling the Volvic lava . In a short time he succeeded in having large panels made suitable for painting that showed no signs of warping when fired. A prototype, the life-size head of an old man, was shown at the Paris industrial exhibition in 1827 and was awarded a prize.

After Mortelèque had made the process applicable to larger pictures, Alexandre Abel de Pujol designed the front of a side altar in Ste-Élisabeth (Paris) with medallions of theological virtues in lava painting.

Portico of St-Vincent-de-Paul (Paris)

The German-born Parisian architect Jakob Ignaz Hittorff became an important protagonist of this new method for painting the exterior of buildings, in general in connection with architecture . The furnishing of the portico of St-Vincent-de-Paul with lava panels painted by Pierre-Jules Jollivet, however, met with strong rejection , also because of their polychromy . The panels were removed, put into storage and only reassembled from 2009 to 2011 according to his original plans.

Hittorf sent samples of lava painting to the King of Prussia in Berlin. Ernst Förster described panels with individual figures and arabesques in the (New) Pompeian style ; he praised the beauty of the colors, the ease and determination of the treatment, as well as their firmness and durability. In collaboration with the Hachette company of Ferdinand Mortelèque's son-in-law, Hittorff had round tables made with polychrome tops made of lava painting, which are very rare today.

In Berlin there was some production of lava painting in the late 1840s. Here, volcanic rock from the Eifel was used , which was sawn into panels so that they could be inserted into the walls of a building. The lava plates were covered with a white glaze, which chemically bonds to the stone by burning. The smooth surface obtained in this way was then painted with paints made from metal oxides and the image was strengthened again by firing once or repeatedly. Inspired by Ludwig Persius , August von Kloeber in particular dealt with the new method. He first worked with the Feilner stove factory , then with the Berlin cathedral building workshop and the porcelain painter Mertins. There were plans to decorate the Berlin Cathedral with lava painting. These were abandoned after 1848 along with the design by Friedrich August Stüler . Individual sample decorative panels have been preserved in the cathedral's museum.

The disadvantage was that the work in lava painting was time-consuming and complex, the artists were limited in their choice of colors and expressions, and the firing procedure was costly and dangerous.

In the second half of the 19th century, the process became less and less used and was forgotten in the artistic field and outside France. It experienced a renaissance in France from 1920 with the introduction of Michelin- sponsored street signs.

It is still used today to manufacture signs and surfaces in the kitchen and sanitary area. The glazed lava plates from Volvic are marketed under the name Pyrolave .

Examples

  • Pierre-Jules Jollivet: panel for St-Vincent-de-Paul

  • Tympanum of the thesis door of the Wittenberg Castle Church

literature

Web links

Commons : Lava Paintings  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lave de Volvic. 1: Mortelèque
  2. ↑ Images from Le soubassement de l'autel de la chapelle de la Vierge
  3. ↑ Conversations Lexicon (lit.)
  4. ↑ La Table des quatre Saisons in the art trade, accessed on April 12, 2016
  5. ↑ Eggers (lit.)
  6. ↑ Dom-Museum der Oberpfarr- und Domkirche ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 12, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de
  7. ↑ Painting on lava (lit.)
  8. ^ Art on the way of fire - The enameled lava and the tourist signs. , accessed April 12, 2016
  9. ↑ Pyrolave , accessed on April 12, 2016
  10. ↑ Berlin calendar for 1850 , supplement p. 9