Contact / Offers

Evelyn and I bought our first piece of Art Nouveau pottery at the Chicago O'Hare Antiques Show in the fall of 1991, shortly after we married: a small Clément Massier iridescent vase with snail décor. We were hooked. Our first masterpiece followed in the summer of 1994, a large Massier iridescent vase with incised seahorses that Jason Jacques "picked" at the Paris flea markets, a piece that proudly remains in the Bestiaire. From Massier our passion grew to Amphora, Rozenburg, and Zsolnay, and most of what we bought featured animals. After selling a sizeable portion of that collection, I decided in November 2024 to make a dramatic change and focus primarily on French Art Nouveau ceramics with animal themes. So the Bestiaire de Céramique Art Nouveau was born, coinciding with my retirement from the practice of law.

The collection has become my full-time passion. The focus is decidedly French, but I regularly add pieces from elsewhere in continental Europe to show how other countries "dialogued" with France during the focus period of 1870–1920. The buying and selling is exciting, but researching and writing about the collection is equally rewarding.

So, dear reader, please write if you have a question about an object, an artist, or the archive itself; if you are a curator, scholar, or author interested in a loan, an image, or a citation; or if you have an animal-themed Art Nouveau ceramic for sale. For offers, photographs of the piece, its base and marks, the dimensions, and a note on condition and provenance will help me respond quickly.

Kind regards,
Todd Arkebauer
Chicago, IL
tarkebauer@yahoo.com