The magnificent discovery, brought about by the single initiative of an individual who had said that he would succeed, and who heroically endured all kinds of misery, privations, and humiliations, in order to attain his object, was the labour of not less than fifteen years.
“To console me,” relates Palissy, “even those from whom I had a right to expect help laughed at me” (he here alludes to his family—his wife, and children—who had not the same unbounded faith as himself in the ultimate success of his labours); “they paraded the town exclaiming that I was burning the woodwork of my house; thus was my credit injured, and I was looked upon as a fool. Others said I was attempting to make base coin. I went about quite humiliated, ashamed of myself. I owed money in several quarters, and generally had two children out at nurse, and not able to pay the cost. All ridiculed me, saying: ‘He deserves to starve, because he has given up his trade.’
“Struggling on in this way, at the end of ten years I became so thin that my legs and arms had no roundness of shape left about them; my legs were all of a size (toutes d’une venue); so that as soon as I began to walk, the garters with which I fastened my stockings used at once to slip down, stockings and all, on to my heels.... For many years, having nothing wherewith to cover my ovens, I was exposed all night long to the winds and the rains, without receiving any help or consolation, except from the screech-owls hooting on one side and the dogs howling on the other.... Sometimes I found myself, with all my garments wet through from the rain, going to bed at midnight, or at dawn of day; and when proceeding in this condition to bed, I went reeling along without a light, and stumbling from side to side, like a man drunk with wine; I was overcome by previous sorrow, the more so because after long-continued work I saw my labour lost. And on entering my chamber I found a fresh persecution awaiting me—the complaints of my wife—worse than the first, and which now makes me wonder how it was I did not die of grief.... I have been in such anguish that many and many a time I fancied I was at death’s door.”
At last, despite all these obstacles, disappointments, physical and mental suffering, the determined experimentalist succeeded in his anticipations, and gave to the world those works he called rustics, and which were so original and so beautiful that they had but to be seen in order to invite attention, and to gain for him all the praise, as well as the profit, he received.
We have just intimated it was at Saintes that Palissy, when in search of immortal fame, underwent his rude apprenticeship. A short time after he had attained these definite results, religious questions having caused some disturbances in Saintonge, the Constable de Montmorency, who had been sent to suppress the Huguenot rising, had an opportunity of seeing Palissy’s works: he requested that he should be presented to him, and at once declared himself his friendly protector. And we must take this word protector in its widest sense, for the potter, who had zealously embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, and who subsequently preferred to be imprisoned for life rather than abjure his faith (if he did not die in the Bastille, at least he was imprisoned there at the time of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew), indeed required protection, as much for the exercise of liberty of conscience as for carrying on his artistic labours. After Montmorency had commissioned him to execute some considerable works, which also gained him the patronage of several important personages, he obtained for him the favour of royalty. Palissy was summoned to Paris, and received the title of “inventeur des rustiques figulines du roi et de la reine-mère”—Henri II. and Catherine de Médicis. He was lodged in the Tuileries; and was not long there before he became renowned, not only for his ceramic productions, but also for his scientific knowledge.
In the recent building operations at the Tuileries, on digging a trench in the garden, the workshop of Bernard Palissy was discovered; being recognised by fragments and various pieces of enamelled pottery with figures in relievo. Among these was found a large fragment of the dish of Palissy, known under the name of the Baptismal Dish, on account of the subject represented thereon. In July, 1865, while excavating in the part of the palace where the “Salle des Etats” has been built, the workmen discovered, below the level of the surface soil, two ovens for baking pottery, in a tolerably good state of preservation. One contained pieces of those muffles (gazettes) Palissy is said to have invented, and which were employed in baking delicate pieces of work—imprints of various kinds of ornaments, and figures in altorelievo: two of these are described by Palissy himself in the “Devis d’une grotte pour la royne, mère du roy” (“device of a grotto for the queen, the king’s mother”), and which he thus indicates in the following sentence:—“I should wish to make certain figures from nature, following her so closely, even to the small hair in the beard and eyebrows, as to make them the natural size.” These peculiarities are to be seen in the fragments of the moulds which have been discovered. In the same page Palissy says, “Also there would be another, composed completely of sea-shells of different kinds; that is to say, the two eyes of two shells, the nose, mouth, and chin, forehead and cheeks, all made out of sea-shells, as well as even the remainder of the body.” This was found in fragments, as also a hand moulded from nature, and holding a sword of ancient make ([Fig. 39]). Among the fragments moulded from the naked and the draped form, is the one which we give ([Fig. 40]); it is thus described by Palissy:—“Also for the sake of astonishing mankind, I wished to make three or four (figures) draped, and with their hair dressed in quaint ways, whose dresses and head-dresses shall be of divers linen, cloths, or striped materials so natural that no man would think but it was the object itself which the workman had wished to imitate.”[4]
Fig. 38.—Ornamentation on Pottery by Bernard Palissy.
We thus see how Palissy, called “Maître Bernard des Thuilleries,” deserved the esteem of the sovereigns who desired he should be near them.
M. Jacquemart says of Palissy ware:—“It is remarkable in more ways than one—for its white paste with a shade of yellowish grey, for its hardness, and its infusibility, equalling that of fine earthenware or pipe-clay. These give it a special character, that distinguishes it from Italian productions, the clay of which is of a dirty and dusky red. The enamel has great brilliancy; it is hard, and is not unfrequently wavy (tresaille). The colours vary a little, but they are bright—pure yellow, yellow ochre, indigo blue, grey blue, emerald green produced from copper, yellow green, violet brown, and manganese violet. As for the white, it is somewhat dull, and cannot be compared with Luca della Robbia ware; wherefore the most persevering researches of Palissy, who invented all the processes which he employed in his work, aimed at the attainment of greater brilliancy. The under part of Palissy ware is never of a uniform tone of colour; it is spotted or tinted with blue, yellow, and violet brown.