A-Z of Ceramics - P is for Palissy

Bernard Palissy (born about 1509/10, died about 1585) was a colourful and romantic character. Although patronised by the Catholic nobility, he was a militant Huguenot (Protestant) who finally perished in the Bastille. In the 19th century he was revered almost as much as a Protestant martyr as a master potter. In the 1850s parts of Palissy's fabled rustic grotto made for Catherine de Medici were found during excavations for the Louvre.

By using revolutionary colours, and moulds cast from actual animals and plants, Palissy had invented an entirely new type of ware. He was a great self-publicist and wrote dramatic accounts of his struggles to develop clays and glazes, an obsession that condemned his family to poverty.

His work was often copied, from the 17th century right up to the 19th century. This makes the identification of genuine Palissy wares very difficult. Unmarked Palissy-type ceramics made by unidentified workshops in the 17th and 18th centuries are sometimes designated 'school, or follower, of Palissy'. In the 19th century historicising French potters such as Charles-Jean Avisseau (1796-1861) and Joseph Landais (1800-83) made and signed similar wares.

Dish, Bernard Palissy (about 1510-1590) or one of his followers, about 1580-1600. Museum no. 7169-1860. Lead glazed earthenware. Bernard Palissy was the most innovative and original ceramist of the French Renaissance. Trained as a glass painter, with a keen interest in the natural world and geology, he published serious studies of natural history and lively accounts of the long struggle and desperate financial straits to which he was driven to perfect the modeling, firing and glazing of his ceramics. Palissy studied the chemistry of glazes and by 1567 had set up a kiln on the grounds of the Palais des Tuileries in Paris for which he was commissioned to make a grotte rustique by Catherine de' Medici, daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici, duke of Urbino. It was never completed.

Dish, Joseph Landais, Tours, France, about 1855. Museum no. 2815-1856. Enamelled earthenware. In the mid-19th century the work of Bernard Palissy was rediscovered and it became very popular. This encouraged a number of French potters to produce copies. They were at least as good as the originals, and often much more elaborate.