Bernard Palissy (1509/10-1590)was particularly interested in the natural world and conducted numerous geological survey s and scientific experiments. He published serious studies of natural history and lively accounts of the long struggle and desperate financial straits to which he was driven in perfecting his ceramics.

In about 1567 Palissy set up a workshop by the Louvre where he was commissioned by the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici, to produce a rustic grotto for the Tuileries. Fragements of the unfinished grotto and workshop were excavated in the nineteenth century and again in the 1980s. In 1585 Palissy was imprisoned for his Protestant views and died five years later.

Palissy is best known for his rustique figulines : basins, ewers and dishes decorated with plants and animals skillfully cast from life and vividly coloured with fused enamel glazes. Having perfected his first rustic basin around 1555, Palissy was presented to Henri II, who praised and purchased it. Such elevated patronage confirms the status of Palissy's ceramics as prized possessions which reflect the growing interest of the period in practical knowledge and empirical understanding of the natural world, its 'curiosities' and phenomena.

Palissy's work was extensively imitated by his followers for several decades after his death, and again during the nineteenth century when the style enjoyed a popular revival. Consequently, it is often extremely difficult to distinguish the work of Bernard Palissy from that of others.