Spider and Web Vase

Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix for Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat Spiderweb Vase, c. 1892–1893

Credit line

Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix for Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat

Sculptor / Modeler

Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix

Ceramist

Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat

Producing atelier

Atelier Dalpayrat

Year

c. 1892–1893

Material

Glazed stoneware

Dimensions

H 5 1/8 in. / 13 cm

Animal Classification

Terrestrial Invertebrates → Arachnids

Geographic Classification

France → Île-de-France → Hauts-de-Seine → Bourg-la-Reine

Primary image Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix for Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat Spiderweb Vase, c. 1892–1893 · Click to open

Object Details

Object title: Spiderweb Vase
Credit line: Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix for Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat
Sculptor / Modeler: Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix
Ceramist: Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat
Producing atelier: Atelier Dalpayrat
Year: c. 1892–1893
Material: Glazed stoneware
Dimensions: H 5 1/8 in. / 13 cm

Marks & Inscriptions

Impressed script signature “Dalpayrat” on base.

Provenance

Jean-Pierre Hassler, Switzerland, acquired in 1999

Robert Zehil Gallery, Monte Carlo

Literature

Horst Makus, Helen Bieri, André Dalpayrat, Jean Girel, and Madeleine Strobel, Adrien Dalpayrat: Céramique française de l'Art Nouveau / Art du feu (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche, 1998), cat. no. 78, illus., as Vase à la toile d'araignée, c. 1900, Collection J.P.H., Suisse. ISBN 3-925369-56-2.

Etienne Tornier, Adrien Dalpayrat: The Peter Marino Collection (London: Phaidon, 2020), illustrating related works by Dalpayrat and providing broader context for the artist’s sculptural stoneware production.

Authorship & Production

Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix (sculptor, French, 1857–1893) for Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat (ceramist, French, 1844–1910) at atelier Dalpayrat (Bourg-la-Reine, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France). Voisin-Delacroix died at the age of 36.

Animal Classification

Terrestrial Invertebrates Arachnids

Geographic Classification

France Île-de-France Hauts-de-Seine Bourg-la-Reine

Commentary

This vase belongs to the collaborative production of Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat and Alphonse Voisin-Delacroix, in which Voisin-Delacroix’s sculptural modeling transformed Dalpayrat’s vessels into hybrid works of ceramic design and relief. Its rounded form provides a concentrated surface for a spider set against a radiating web pattern, creating an object that is at once ornamental, symbolic, and faintly unsettling.

The form is deliberately simple, almost archaic, allowing the interplay of glaze, relief, and incised pattern to dominate. Angular, incised lines converge toward the spider’s body, evoking the geometric structure of a web spread across the vessel’s face. The spider itself is modeled in relief rather than applied as decoration, and its raised body gives the object an immediate tactile presence.

The glaze is one of the vase’s principal achievements. Rich sang-de-boeuf reds blend into green, yellow, turquoise, and blue tones, while darker passages gather around the web and spider. These shifting colors give the impression of depth and moisture, as though the web itself glistens across the ceramic surface.

Symbolically, the spider and web occupied a fascinating place in the fin-de-siècle imagination. The motif could suggest entrapment, patience, danger, fate, and the hidden order of nature. In this example, the spider is neither grotesque nor benign; it becomes an emblem of tension between beauty and threat, ornament and predation.

The scale of the vase is part of its force. At just 13 cm high, it invites close inspection, drawing the viewer into an intimate encounter with the spider motif. Its small size intensifies rather than diminishes the subject, making the object feel condensed, almost jewel-like.

The present example is distinguished by its publication in Horst Makus’s 1998 study of Dalpayrat, where it is illustrated as catalog no. 78. Its documented provenance from Jean-Pierre Hassler further reinforces its place within the known scholarly and collecting history of Dalpayrat’s work. (Note that the Makus book gives the date as c. 1900, but this appears to be an error. Voisin-Delacroix, listed as a collaborator, died in 1893. The present work is therefore dated c. 1892–93, consistent with the known period of the Dalpayrat–Voisin-Delacroix collaboration and with the dating of the closely related Cœur dévoré par un animal (Makus cat. no. 79).)

The vase condenses Dalpayrat’s experimental glaze language, Voisin-Delacroix’s sculptural imagination, and the Symbolist charge of the spider into a single, concentrated form. Here, the animal world becomes both ornament and psychological image.

Related Works

Another Voisin-Delacroix and Dalpayrat collaboration is represented in the Bestiaire: Cœur dévoré par un animal, c. 1892–1893. This 9-inch (22.9 cm) tall sang de boeuf-glazed stoneware vase is shaped like a human heart with a small chimera devouring it from within.

Image Gallery

Overall views, detail studies, marks, textures, and alternate views. Click any tile for fullscreen viewing.

Assigned Classifications

Terrestrial Invertebrates → Arachnids