Historic Inventions

by Rupert Sargent Holland

He had mastered his profession, and the town in Perigord was somewhat too small for him. He must see something of that outer world where many others were making works of art. His skill as a painter of glass, as a draughtsman, and land-measurer, would earn him a living wherever he might go. So he set forth on his travels, as many young scholars and artisans were used to do in those days, working here and there, collecting new ideas, talking with many men of different minds, and gaining a first-hand knowledge of the world that lay about him. He visited the chief provinces of France, saw something of Burgundy and Flanders, and stayed for a time on the banks of the Rhine. His love of acquiring knowledge grew as he traveled, and he studied natural history, geology and chemistry. Where churches were being built he painted glass, where towns or nobles needed measurers or surveyors of their lands he worked for them. When he had seen as much of the world as he wished, he went to the town of Saintes, married, and settled there as a man of several trades.

It was in 1539 that Palissy became a citizen of Saintes, and several years later that chance sent his way a beautiful cup of enameled pottery. Some have said that the cup came from Italy, and some from Nuremberg, but it was of a new pattern to Palissy, and the more he looked at it and handled it the more he wanted to learn the secret of its making, and duplicate it or improve on it. He had the artist’s wish to create something beautiful, and with it was the belief that he could provide well for his wife and children, and raise the potter’s art to a new height if he could learn the secret of this enamel. That thought became his lodestone, and he left all his other work to accomplish it. Much as he knew about glass, he knew nothing about enamel. He had no notion of the materials he should need, nor how he was to combine them. He started to make earthen vessels without knowing how other men had made them. He knew that he should need a furnace, and so he built one, although he had never seen a furnace fired.

The attempt seemed foolhardy from the start. What he had saved he spent in his attempts to find the right materials. Soon his savings were gone, and he had to look about for a new means of living. A survey and plan of the great salt-marshes of Saintonge was wanted in 1543, and Palissy obtained the work. He finished it, was paid the stipulated sum, and immediately spent it in fresh experiments to find the coveted enamel. But he could not find it. One experiment after another ended in rebuff. He labored day and night, and the result of all his labors was the same. But the desire to find that enamel had possessed Palissy’s mind, and it was not a mind to veer or change.

The man was beset by friends who told him he was mad to continue the chase, and that his undoubted talents in other lines were being wasted. He was implored, reproached, and belabored by his wife, who begged him to leave his furnace, and turn to work that would feed and clothe his growing family. He might well have seemed a fanatic, he might well have seemed distraught and cruel to his family, but he met each protest with a simple frankness that disarmed all attacks and showed his indomitable purpose. Those were days of intense suffering for Palissy, and later he described them in his own writings in a way that showed his real depth of feeling and his constant struggle against what he held to be temptations.

He borrowed money to build a new furnace, and when this was done he lived by it, trying one combination of materials after another in his search for the secret of the enamel. Those were superstitious days, and some of his more ignorant neighbors thought that Bernard Palissy must be in league with the devil, since he spent day and night feeding fuel to his furnace, and sending a great volume of smoke and sparks into the air. Some said he was an alchemist trying to turn base metals into gold, some that he was discovering new poisons, some frankly believed that his learning had turned his mind and made him mad. They were all certain of one thing, and that was that his great fires were providing very ill for his family, who became in time a charge on the town’s charity.

For sixteen years Palissy experimented. For sixteen years he had to resist the reproaches of wife and children, and the threats of neighbors. That was an epic struggle, well worth the recording. We can picture the little mediæval town, surrounded by its salt marshes, the prosperous burghers, and the strange man, Bernard Palissy, at whom all others scoffed, whose children played in the streets in rags and tatters, but who, himself, was always working at his furnace with demoniac zeal. “Too much learning,” says one burgher, shaking his head. “What business had a simple glass-worker to study those texts out of Italy?” “Seeking for more learning than other folk have is apt to league one with the Evil One,” says number two. “Bernard has sold his soul. He will fall in his furnace some day, and go up in smoke.” “Nay,” says the third burgher, “he will live forever, to bring shame to our town of Saintes. He is like one of those plagues the priests tell us of.” And he crosses himself devoutly.

Palissy, the Potter, after an Unsuccessful Experiment

But Palissy cared for nothing but to learn that secret. At first he had had a workman to help him; now he let him go. He had no money to pay him, and so gave him all his clothes except those he had on. He knew his family were starving, and he dared not go out into the streets for fear of the maledictions of his neighbors. But he fed that furnace and he melted his different compositions. When he could get no other fuel he turned to the scant furnishings of his house. He burned his bed and chairs, his table, and everything that was made of wood. He felt that he was now on the verge of his discovery; but he must have more fire. He tore strips of board from the walls, and piled them in the furnace. Still he needed more heat, and ran out into the yard behind his dwelling. There were sticks that supported vines, and a fence that ran between his land and the next. He took the wood of the fence, the sticks of the vines, and hurried back with them to the furnace. He threw them on the blaze, he bent over his composition, and he found the secret answered for him. After sixteen years he learned how to make that rare enamel.

It was a glorious achievement, and it brought Palissy fame and fortune. With his new knowledge he had soon fashioned pottery, decorated with rustic scenes, and exquisitely enameled, that all lovers of works of art desired at any price. The first pieces of his rustic pottery soon reached the court of France, and Henry II and his nobles ordered vases and figures from him to ornament the gardens of their châteaux. Catherine de’ Medici became his patron, and the powerful Constable de Montmorenci sent to Saintes for Palissy to decorate his château at Ecouen. Fragments of this work have been preserved, exquisite painted tiles, and also painted glass, setting forth the story of Psyche, which Palissy prepared for the château.