Saint-Porchaire ware

Its style clearly showed the influence of the Fontainebleau School of Mannerist decor, which introduced the Italian Renaissance to France.

Predating Palissy ware, and Italian Medici porcelain by some decades, it might be called the first high-quality European ceramic style to show an interest in sculptural forms, rather than the decoration in paint of flattish dish surfaces typical in Hispano-Moresque ware and Italian Renaissance maiolica.

In 1898 Edmond Bonaffé linked its source for the first time to the village of Saint-Porchaire (nowadays a part of Bressuire, Poitou).

[5] The attribution to this small village raises as many questions as it answers, and despite considerable evidence of many types supporting it, many scholars still favour a closer connection to (usually) Paris.

[6] There is no archaeological evidence at Saint-Porchaire to support the village as the kiln site, and the sophisticated range of design sources, both engravings and actual examples of metalwork seems beyond the cultural horizon of a place far from Fontainebleau and Paris.

Banding and fields of fine geometrical decoration or rinceaux were made by repeatedly impressing metal dies into the leather-hard body, or to thin strips of clay that were then stuck on.

After further drying the impressions were filled with dark brown, rust red or ochre yellow clay slip that was rubbed off the surface to give an inlay with a discreet range of colors.

[15] The exact technique for making the extremely small and delicate inlaid patterns remains somewhat of a puzzle for scholars.

Salt cellars, standing cups with covers, plateaux, ewers and the spouted vessels called biberons, and candlesticks, often in distinctive bizarre and fantastic designs derived from Mannerist silver- and goldsmiths' work, are the usual forms of Saint-Porchaire wares.