Earthenware with moulded decoration ('Earth and Water from the Elements') and coloured glazes. French, Bernard Palissy or close follower, about 1580-1600

Bequeathed by George Salting, Esq.

People - Bernard Palissy was the most celebrated of French potters. At his death he was followed by a school of imitators and was elevated to romantic, heroic status in the 19th century. The cult of Palissy gradually developed between the 17th century and the 19th: his immediate followers, working in his technique and style, confused the identification of any possibly genuine production. His writings were published in highly censored form in the 17th century and then unedited in the 18th century. In the 19th century it became impossible to separate the man from the myth that had grown up around him. This myth was as enthusiastically cherished in Britain as in France, not least owing to Minton's own Palissy-ware. In the Museum he was awarded a window of his own in the Ceramic Gallery (now the Silver Gallery), in company with Luca della Robbia (1399/1400-1482) and Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795).

Design & Designing - Although he was a great self-publicist, whose name is associated with several different types of ceramic, and although some moulds still exist, there are very few ceramic works surviving that are known to be by Palissy himself and his atelier. Perhaps best-known of the ceramics associated with him are those original and innovative wares called 'rustic', which incorporate cast elements such as leaves, reptiles and water creatures. These were developed in response to the fashion for Italian-style grottoes introduced into France in the mid-16th century. But Palissy was also a skilful interpreter in ceramic of classical Renaissance ornament of strapwork, masks, grotesques and panels enclosing scenes of classical figures as allegories.

C.2305-1910