Saint-Porchaire ware

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Saint-Porchaire ware is type of pottery, which is itself a type of ceramic. More specifically it is a refined white faience made for a restricted clientele for a few decades in the sixteenth century, from the 1520s to the 1540s; it marks the inception of a high ceramic tradition in France. A scant seventy pieces of this ware survive, all of them well known before World War II. None have turned up in the last half-century. When collectors first noticed this ware in the nineteenth century, the tradition of where it had been made was lost, and it was only known as Henri II ware,^[1] for some pieces bore the king's monogram; its style clearly showed the character of the Fontainebleau School of Mannerist decor, which introduced the Italian Renaissance to France. In 1898 Edmond Bonaffé linked its source for the first time to the modest village of Saint-Porchaire, Poitou. He noted that in 1552 Charles Estienne had spoken of the beauty of the Saint-Porchaire ware, and that in 1566 a local poet had praised it in a poem.

Saint-Porchaire products were extraordinarily labour-intensive, and in overall decorative design, no two pieces are alike. The basic clay shapes were thrown on the wheel and perhaps refined on the lathe or were assembled from shaped slabs of clay, mold-shaped sculptural decoration was applied to give relief masks, festoons, and the like. Additionally, hand-modelled figures might serve as handles for ewers. Banding and fields of extremely fine geometrical decoration or rinceaux were made by repeatedly impressing metal dies into the leather-hard body, which after further drying 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. From the first, connoisseurs noted that comparable metal dies were being used by contemporaneous book-binders, which may have inspired this unique technique. Further touches of colored slip, such as a spinach green, were applied.

The surface was then covered with a lead glaze that fired to a slightly golden varnish-like transparency, resulting in a decorative and fragile ware that was never intended to be serviceable. Salt cellars, standing cups with covers, plateaux, ewers, and candlesticks, often in distinctive bizarre and fantastic designs derived from Mannerist silver- and goldsmiths' work, are the usual forms of Saint-Porchaire wares. Many armorials on Saint-Porchaire wares show that its clients were to be found among the nobility,^[2] and the religious institutions, in addition to wares that bear the royal arms.

Recent findings suggest Bernard Palissy may have employed some Saint-Porchaire techniques at his Paris workshop, 1565-72. Other than that, the experiment at Saint-Porchaire remained without direct influence in the development of French ceramics, which, apart from Palissy's experiments, started virtually anew with increasingly fine faience in the later seventeenth century.

[edit] Notes

^ Faïence d'Oiron was another term in the trade, under the mistaken impression that the manufacture had been sited at Oiron in the Deux-Sèvres département; some pieces of Saint-Porchaire ware had been carefully conserved at the Château d'Oiron.
^ A ewer at the Louvre Museum bears the monogram G of Gilles de Montmorency-Laval.