Whilst the manufactory in Briare originally started with earthenware pottery, the factory founded in Paris by Jean-Félix Bapterosses (1813–1885) initially began manufacturing porcelain buttons in 1845.

The company began as Bapterosses & Cie of Paris, France, which was established to manufacture and sell porcelain buttons made according to a method quite similar to the one patented by Richard Prosser in 1840, but following the invention of a device that could mold 500 buttons at a time vs. only one at the competing English factory,[1] Mintons (which had acquired the rights to the original patent) thanks to a new formulation of the paste in which milk was added to the slip to improve plasticity.

Today émaux de Briare sells its mosaics across the world for small and large projects alike, one of the latest ones being the walkways for the new Miami Marlins stadium, designed by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez.

[5][6] Mr Bapterosses was also a precocious marketing man in the sense that he immediately advertised his products under the FB brand [7] and associated it with the numerous medals and awards he had received the world over.

When the Art Deco movement came, Emaux de Briare adapted and worked with then trendy architects such as Robert Mallet-Stevens, (bathroom in Villa Cavrois for instance.