Henri-Deux Ware: Faience d’Oiron.—This unique earthen-ware for years perplexed the lovers of pottery. It seemed to appear from Touraine and La Vendée, and only here and there a piece. It was so peculiar, so different from any and all the known styles, that no one could decide whence it came or by whom it was made. The impression—and it was only an impression—seemed to be that it must have come out of Italy, and that Benvenuto Cellini was as likely as any one to have had to do with its designs or execution; and this simply because he was known to have stamped his peculiar taste upon works which might be classed with this only in expressing the finer forms and decorations of the Italian Renaissance.
A few pieces only of this ware came to light from time to time, but they were eagerly seized upon, and they gave rise to much speculation. Why there should be so few, and why no traces of like ware were found in other directions, remained for a time a mystery. But it was solved. I quote here from a paper by Mr. Ritter, which sums up what is now known upon the subject; he writes with the knowledge and appreciation of a practical potter:
“It was so late as the year 1839 that M. André Pottier, a French writer on art, first announced to the world the existence of the singular species of pottery now known as ‘Henri-Deux’ ware. He gave it as his opinion that it was the production of Florentine artists working in France. Until thus brought to the knowledge of connoisseurs, the very existence of this exquisite ware had been forgotten. It soon, however, became famous. Every corner of Europe was ransacked for specimens of it. Dukes, princes, and millionaires, contended with the heads of national museums for the few pieces still to be found. No ware ever yet became so costly; for every hundred pounds that a rare piece of Sèvres or maiolica will fetch, the ‘Henri-Deux’ will bring its thousand. As yet only about fifty pieces have come to light; and of these fifty more than one-half have found their way into the galleries of our wealthier English amateurs.
“Those who see a specimen of this rare and precious pottery for the first time are apt to be extremely disappointed. They see a vase, or a ewer, or a candlestick, of fantastic shape, covered with a thin, greenish-yellow glaze, the coloring not by any means brilliant, and the surface seemingly inlaid and incrusted with the innumerable details of a most elaborate ornamentation, made out in quiet browns, blacks, and sad neutral tints. Nothing is less striking to a casual or an ignorant observer—nothing in the whole range of decorative art so absolutely exquisite in design and effect to the cultivated appreciation of a connoisseur in Renaissance-work.
“No sooner was the ware discovered than speculations began as to its maker, its date, and the locality of its fabrication. On no single point did the ten or twelve French writers on the subject come to an agreement, and a certain amount of unsolved mystery still attaches to all these points. There is no so-called ‘potter’s mark’ on any of the pieces except one, and this solitary mark is not recognizable as that of any known potter. It may be tortured into a monogram, or assumed to be a device, at the pleasure of those who form their various theories on the origin of the ware.
“The pieces are decorated with the arms of French royal and noble families. One piece has on it the salamander surrounded by flames, the device of Francis I. of France; and very many out of the fifty bear the well-known monogram of Henry II. worked into the ornamentation of the surface—a circumstance which has given the ware its name. The date is, therefore, more or less fixed to the short period between 1540 and 1560, or twenty years. As to the nationality of the artist, the best authorities join in thinking he must have been a Frenchman, because the work is essentially of the style of the somewhat distinctive French Renaissance then prevailing. The precise locality of its production could only be inferred to be somewhere in Touraine, because a majority of the pieces can be traced as coming from that province.
“Such was the mystery which hung about all connected with this curious ware—a mystery which not a little enhanced the interest taken in it, and perhaps the estimation in which it was held.
“This mystery is now, to a great extent, cleared up.
“At the court of King Francis lived a widow lady of high birth, named Hélène de Hangest. Her husband had been governor of the king, and Grand-Master of France. She was herself an artist, and a collection of drawings by her of considerable artistic merit is preserved. They are portraits of the celebrities of the period. She was in favor at court; the king himself composed a rhymed motto to each of her portraits, and some of these verses are written in his own hand. It is established that Hélène de Hangest set up a pottery at her Château of Oiron, and that Francis Charpentier, a potter, was in her employ. To his hand, under the auspices of the Châtelaine of Oiron, is due the famous ware of ‘Henri-Deux.’
“Mr. J. C. Robinson gives it as his opinion that the technical merit of the ‘Henri-Deux’ ware is very small. With due deference to Mr. Robinson, who, as a rule, writes well and learnedly upon this and cognate matters, we do not think he would say this if he had been able to appreciate the subject from a potter’s point of view. The body of the ‘Henri-Deux’ ware is of admirable texture and quality; the mode in which the various clays are incorporated into the substance of the pieces without shrinking or expansion, the clearness, thinness, and smoothness of the glaze—which, by-the-way, is plumbiferous—all these things are so many marvels of skillful manipulation, and fill the mind of a practical potter with admiration.”