Decorated Ware from Lavoye

Extract

Twenty years ago my friend, Monsieur Georges Chenet, who had excavated several sites of Lavoye potteries in the Argonne, sent me a representative collection of fragments of moulds and bowls from these potteries. He had already published several articles on the rich material he had excavated, but he informed me that he intended to write a large and comprehensive monograph on the subject. However, he went with Professor C. F. A. Schaeffer to Syria to excavate the important site of Ras Shamra, and his Lavoye work fell into abeyance. It is, therefore, an opportune moment to publish this collection, which he so kindly sent me; for the account given by Fölzer was incomplete and not systematic enough in differentiating the work of the various potters, although the description was founded on material discovered by Dr. Meunier and M. Chenet. Unfortunately nearly all their material was looted or destroyed by the Germans in the last war and possibly M. Chenet's later collections may have suffered the same fate in this war.