Museum Collections

This circular dish, likely dating to the late nineteenth century, was made in the manner of talented French potter Bernard Palissy, who began practicing his trade in the sixteenth-century. An enthusiastic natural scientist, Palissy used local fish, plants and reptiles—he made casts of actual specimens for use in his modeling—fashioned in a range of colored glazes, to develop what he called "pastoral pottery." Although he is recorded as having produced his rustic ware in abundance, the only documented work by his hand was the grotto (now destroyed) in the garden of the Tuileries.