The colour was in shades of a deep blue (Fig. 59).
Pierre Clérissy (1728) was the name of the first artist and also of his nephew, who continued the works after him in Moustiers.
Polychrome decoration became common at a later date, when some Moustiers workmen, who had been to the Alcora potteries in Spain, introduced the Spanish style of colouring, then in great fashion, which consisted of bright orange yellow, light green, and blue outlines. The later Moustiers ware is decorated with festoons and ovals with figures or busts painted in them.
Marseilles fayence is of a delicate and pure enamel, and is painted with flowers, shell fish, and insects, &c., which as a rule are thrown on or disposed in an irregular sort of way. Much of the decoration was Chinese or Rouen imitations, and little landscapes painted in red camaïen; gold was sometimes used in the stalks of the flowers.
Fig. 58.—Plate, Lille Ware.
Strasburg pottery, though classed as French, owed a good deal of its process of manufacture and general character to German methods of manipulation and decorative processes, as German potters were mostly employed in the works.
The great difference was in the mode of decoration, the latter being applied on the fired surface of the enamel in the Strasburg wares; whereas in the wares of the other French potteries that have just been considered the decoration was applied to the unbaked and consequently absorbent ground. The latter was the more artistic method, and the former, or German method, allowed a wider range of the artist’s palette, and admitted of greater delicacy of execution, but was more harsh in effect, and did not incorporate the colours with the enamel in a way that an absorbent ground or unbaked enamel would do.
Fig. 59.—Plate, with Stag Hunt; Moustiers Ware.