« One day when I was out walking in the mountains a storm suddenly broke. Within seconds a violent downpour had transformed the countryside. Water was running everywhere and I noticed that it carried gravel, sand and earth with it. The water was no longer clear and transparent; it had taken up and incorporated in it a part of the mountain. This made me think that during firing the glazes, for which we so carefully weigh out the ingredients, mix with the clay just like the rain mixed with the earth from the mountain. After firing the clay incorporates the glaze and the glaze incorporates the clay. From this exchange is born the visual delight that we feel when we look at a high-fired ceramic object.» It was in such figurative, evocative, poetic and yet precise terms that Jean Girel spoke at a conference for the Friends of the Sevres Museum about his long technical and aesthetic experience. The union of Jean Girel's technical and aesthetic qualities has always been an inseparable one. In fact, this stubborn yet unshakeable union is the reason behind his success. A success which, starting in 1979 at the exhibition of art workshops where his reputation was established, was immediate and which has never failed him throughout his working life. Jean Girel is a technician in the broad sense of the term. He reads everything he can lay his hands on but only believes what he sees, what he can test, observe, reproduce, master, understand and explain. No dogma, no pre-conceived ideas; his whole ethos lies in observation, exchange, discussion, thought and generosity. Ask him for a formula and he'll give it to you ; secrets are only for those who never discover anything. An open door allows more in than it lets out. Why make a mystery out of things: discovering something new is so much more fun. Such is his point of view. In his slow speech with its hint of Savoy accent he'll explain this to you irrefutably. His own words make him laugh. He doesn't listen to himself talk, doesn't take himself seriously, never pontificates and smiles when he talks. No peremptory or arbitrary points of view, just a never-ending inquisitiveness about a substance which thrives from this same never-ending inquisitiveness.” >Antoine d'Albis, President of the Association of the Friends of the Sevres Museum.

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