Fig. 37.—A figured Border of an Enamelled Dish, by Bernard Palissy.
But if the certain knowledge which Palissy thought he had acquired as to the early convulsions of the globe had succeeded in satisfying his own mind, the glazier-surveyor (who was now a married man with a family) still remained in straitened circumstances, and was obliged to find some means of avoiding actual want. We must refer to what he himself says more than a quarter of a century later, and when success had completely crowned his efforts, to learn what were his recollections of his early and hazardous experiments in a new channel. “Know,” says he, in his expressive language, “that it is twenty-five years since an earthen vessel was shown to me; it was turned, enamelled, and of such exquisite beauty, that from that very moment I began to argue with myself, while remembering observations made derisively to me by some persons when I was painting figures. And seeing that they were beginning to give up the use of these objects in the country where I lived, and that glazing also was not in great demand, I set myself to think that had I but discovered the art of making enamel, I might make earthen vessels and other articles of beautiful appearance; for God had given me the capacity to understand a little about ceramic painting, and from that instant, without in the least regarding my utter ignorance of siliceous substances, I set myself to discover enamels like a man groping in the dark.”
It has been much disputed, but we may as well say at once to no purpose, how to assign with certainty a particular locality whence came this object which inspired Palissy; but whatever may have been its origin, it seems to us to be a question of little moment, because at the time when Palissy must have seen it, the Italian manufactories, and even those which were afterwards established in various localities, had succeeded in disseminating their wares far and wide; and, besides this, the works of Palissy, which we still see, bear testimony to a style that was peculiarly his own, and in some measure original.
However this may have been, here we have him seeking out and grinding all kinds of substances, mixing them, and coating with them pieces of ware which he first subjected to the action of an ordinary potter’s oven, afterwards to the more powerful heat employed by glass-makers. Then we see him building an oven in his own house—taking into his service a working potter, to whom, on one occasion, when he has no money for the payment of wages, he is obliged to give his own clothes; again we find him turning, single-handed, a mill for grinding his materials which ordinarily required “two powerful men” to work it; then again, wounding his hands in repairing the oven that the fire cracked, and the bricks and mortar of which had become “liquified and vitrified;” so that he is obliged for several days “to eat his soup with his fingers tied up in rags;” pushing the conscientiousness and zeal of an experimentalist so far as to fall down in a state of insensibility on finding that the whole contents of an oven, on which he had been relying, proved to have numerous defects. In despite
BIBERON OF HENRI II WARE.
Or Oiron fayence. (Pourtales’ Collection.) Now in the possession of J. Malcolm, Esq.
of his poverty we see him destroying pieces of work that he considered were not quite perfect, though a fair price was offered him for them, merely because “they might bring discredit on him and loss of reputation;” and finally, we see him breaking up and putting into the fire, for want of other fuel, the flooring of his house and the furniture of his humble abode.