Bernard Palissy was one of the most remarkable men who practised the art of the potter in France or in any other country. He was born about the year 1510, but his birthplace is not exactly known. He worked in his younger days and up to the period of his middle age at surveying, glass-making, portrait painting, and was also well skilled in natural sciences, but was not brought up to the trade of a potter.

It was in the year 1542, at Saintes, that in order to increase his slender means he took to the making of earthenware. In writing his life he says: "It is now more than five-and-twenty years that a cup was shown to me of fashioned and enamelled clay, and of such beauty, that from that day I began to struggle with my own thoughts, and hence, heedless of my having no knowledge of the different kinds of argillaceous earth, I tried to discover the art of making enamel, like a man groping in the dark".

So he struggled on for fifteen years, with starvation and death often at his door, until at last he mastered his art, and produced ultimately, as he says, "those vessels of intermixed colours, after the manner of jasper".

The particular jasper enamel invented by Palissy is a deep rich glaze of a green and brownish variegated character. He made many "rustic pieces" as dishes, plates, and plaques, on which he admirably arranged reptiles, fishes, frogs, shells, insects of various kinds, fruits, leaves, acorns, etc, modelled in relief and covered with the jasper glaze.

Most of these dishes were elliptical in shape and had broad rims (Fig. 50).

He decorated a "grotto" with his famous pottery at the ChÆ'teau of Ecouen for his patron the Constable de Montmorency, and similar grottoes at the Tuileries, and at Reux, in Normandy, for Catherine de' Medici. Palissy made other forms of pottery besides his rustic pieces, such as ewers, bottles, hunting flasks, and dishes, ornamented with figures and other work. It is likely that the figure work was executed by his sons or relatives, Nicholas and Mathurin Palissy, who worked for Catherine de' Medici on the Tuileries grotto. Many of the Palissy wares are similar in design to the Å tains and pewter works of Briot and of other artists, as Prieur, Rosso, Gauthier, and Primaticcio. Openwork baskets and dishes and other modelled works were covered with the jasper glaze. Of the invention of the latter Palissy does not seem to have communicated the secret to his successors, for after his death the jasper glaze was imitated, but without much success, as appears evident from some specimens that are now in existence which were made from his moulds.

Palissy was nearly all his life engaged in lecturing on scientific and other subjects, and in the work of proselytism for the Reformed Church of which he was a member, being in prison more than once on account of his religious ideas, and eventually died in the Bastille Prison in poverty in 1590 at the age of eighty.

As efforts of decorative design the encrusted wares of Palissy cannot be placed in a high rank of decorative art, but the art of France would be considerably poorer without the genius of Palissy, an artist of whom any nation might be justly proud.

Fig. 50. Rustic Dish, with Reptiles and Fishes; Palissy Ware. (S. K. M).

Nevers, Rouen, And Moustiers Wares

We have mentioned before that some maiolica artists and workmen came from Italy in the sixteenth century to Nevers and Lyons and there set up potteries. One of these artists, named Scipio Gambin, worked at Nevers, under the patronage of the Duc de Nivernais.

The maiolica productions at Nevers were in imitation of the Urbino, Castel-Durante, and Faenza wares, but the colours were inferior, probably owing to the poorer glaze used by the French potters. The subjects of the decoration were at first similar to the "istoriati" decoration of the Urbino ware, and were compositions from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (Fig. 51) or from the Bible. Later on the potters of Nevers imitated the shapes of Oriental pottery with French decorations (Fig. 52).

In 1608 two Italians - the brothers Conrade - came from Genoa to Nevers, and were probably the successors of Gambin : the ware made by them was decorated with a mixture of Chinese and Italian ornament, and the colouring was blue, manganese, brown, and white.

In 1632 a Frenchman named Pierre Custode and his sons established a pottery at the sign of "The Ostrich" at Nevers. To them is ascribed the beautiful Persian blue-coloured pottery decorated with naturalistic flowers and birds in solid white with yellow heightenings, the shape and decoration being Chinese in character. The blue glaze peculiar to Nevers pottery of this period is very fine, and has been imitated by French and foreign potters, but without success.

The great importation of Chinese porcelain into Europe in the seventeenth century and at the beginning of the eighteenth had a strong influence on the art of the Nevers pottery, and many pieces exist on which Chinese designs almost pure were copied in a blue Cama*¹en (monochrome), or in a harmonious mixture of blue and purple-black manganese, the latter colour being a mixture of the blue with manganese. In the eighteenth century the style of design was debased and very much degraded, and the pottery became coarse and heavy.

Fig. 51. Pilgrim's Bottle, Nevers Ware. (S. K. M).

Fig. 52. Vase, Nevers Ware.

Fig. 53. Pilgrim's Bottle, Nevers Ware. (S. K. M).