Manufacture de Choisy-le-Roi, Set of armor, glove and helmet, Circa 1870, glazed ceramic, Choisy-le-Roi, France

This helmet, glove and suit of armor were produced in the 1870s by the Choisy-le-Roi earthenware factory. Produced in the same vein as a shared fascination with the Middle Ages, these three pieces demonstrate a perfectly mastered technique. All three feature historiated relief decoration overlaid with transparent polychrome enamels. This technique, perfected as early as 1842 by Baron de Bourgoing in Rubelles and brilliantly adopted by Théodore Deck from the 1860s onwards, became the hallmark of Choisy-le-Roi’s artistic earthenware in the 1870s.