Jean-Joseph Marie Carriès (1855-1894) is remembered for his visionary work and technical mastery as a sculptor and ceramicist. He was born in Lyon, France where, at the age of six, is orphaned and raised in a Roman Catholic orphanage. He apprentices with a local sculptor, Pierre Vermare, before moving to Paris to enroll at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris to study sculpture under Augustin-Alexandre Dumont. He gains recognition for his sculpted (mostly bronze) works at the Paris Salons of 1875, 1879, and 1881. In 1878, being influenced by the Japanese ceramic works at the World’s Fair in Paris, Jean Carriès begins the study of pottery. In 1886 he is introduced to Ernest Chaplet by the artist Paul Gauguin at the Chaplet workshop on Rue Blomet. In 1888 Jean Carriès installs a workshop in La Bertille in Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye and presents his first stoneware works, a year later, in his studio on Boulevard Arago in Paris. His stoneware includes whimsical “grotesque” masks, fauns with rabbit ears, misshapen toads, heads of babies with grimacing faces, and elegant, sumptuous vases with running glazes. Jean Carriès dies at the age of 39 from pleurisy and is buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Despite his early death, his artistic legacy continues with the followers of l’Ecole De Carriès (school of Carries).