Nevers faience
The city of Nevers, Nièvre, now in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in central France, was a centre for manufacturing faience, or tin-glazed earthenware pottery, between around 1580 and the early 19th century.
[2] However the quality and prestige of the wares has gradually declined, from a fashionable luxury product for the court, to a traditional regional speciality using styles derived from the past.
In the 17th century, Nevers became a pioneer in imitating Asian ceramic styles in Europe, within some decades, followed by all producers of fine wares.
Giulio Gambin was already in Lyons and the Conrade brothers (Corrado in Italy) came from Albisola, who would found the dynasty that dominated Nevers production for a century.
The city was near deposits of excellent pottery clay, an exceptionally good type of sand for making ceramic glaze, forests for wood for the kilns, and was on the major Loire river.
[9] In 1603, the brothers received a monopoly from Henri IV for the making of wares in the style of Faenza, whether painted polychrome or with white grounds, and a generation later Antoine Conrade, son of Dominique, was made faiencier ordinaire to the young Louis XIV in 1644.
[12] The French faience industry received a huge boost when, late in his reign in 1709, Louis XIV pressured the wealthy to donate their silver plate, previously what they normally used to dine, to his treasury to help pay for his wars.
[13] The success of the wares led to several other factories opening in the early 18th century and in 1743, the government limited the number to eleven to prevent flooding the market.
[14] By this time, European porcelain was becoming cheaper and more reliable, and making life difficult for producers of high-quality earthenware across Europe.
[15] The Nevers response was to produce topical faiences patriotiques with which the English were unlikely to compete (although they had done excellent business supplying the new American republic with patriotic wares).
[22] The list of stylistic periods devised by the French authority du Broc de Segange in his 1863 book on Nevers faience is still often repeated,[23] though perhaps needing some adjustment.
[32] As well as the scenes covering a whole surface, many Nevers pieces use grotesque motifs, usually on the raised border of plates or dishes, but also sometimes in the central space.
However, the bird and flower painted decoration seen in most examples of the "Persian" style in fact derives more from Turkish Iznik pottery, which was reaching Europe through Italy.
Chinese literati figures contemplating nature in a lush garden or landscape is a common subject in both countries, though the French treatments have some differences.
The main characters, Astrée and Celadon, spend time disguised as a shepherd and shepherdess, and this is the most popular depiction; very wide hats tend to indicate the pastoral life.
There is a dish with the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, with portraits of Cardinal Mazarin and Luis de Haro, his Spanish counterpart.
[3] The faiences patriotiques of the Revolutionary period typically have one or two figures in the central section, rather crudely painted in a few colours, with a pro-revolutionary slogan or comment below in black cursive script.
[57] Another type of pieces in this popular style, called faience patronymique, showed the patron saint of the recipient, and were common as christening or birthday gifts.
Morgan left most of his "vast collections" to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (accessioned in 1917), including a number illustrated here.
