What is "palissy ware"

Palissy \Pal"is*sy\, a. Designating, or of the nature of, a kind of pottery made by Bernard Palissy, in France, in the 16th centry.

Palissy ware, glazed pottery like that made by Bernard Palissy; especially, that having figures of fishes, reptiles, etc., in high relief. See Palissy, below.

Palissy ware is a 19th-century term for ceramics produced in the style of the famous French potter Bernard Palissy (c. 1510–90), who referred to his own work in the familiar manner as rustique. Palissy's distinctive style of polychrome lead-glazed earthenware in a sombre earth-toned palette, using naturalistic scenes of plants and animals cast from life, was much imitated by other potters both in his own lifetime and especially in the 19th century, when pottery in Palissy's style was produced by Charles-Jean Avisseau of Tours, who rediscovered Palissy's techniques in 1843, his relatives the Landais family of Tours, Georges Pull of Paris, Maurice, and Barbizet. Portuguese Palissy ware was produced by the potteries of Mafra, Jose A. Cuhna, Alves, José Francisco de Sousa, Cezar, Herculano Elias, and Augusto Baptista de Carvalho. Twentieth-century reproductions are extremely common. it is now difficult to identify which 16th-century works in the rustique manner are actually from Palissy's own workshop except by comparison with either fragments excavated in 1878 from remains of the grotto that he certainly decorated at the Tuileries Palace for Catherine de' Medici, who called him to Paris in 1566 or from excavations at the site of his Paris workshop in the Palais du Louvre. Many museums have now become cautious in their attributions.

This distinctive style of pottery is characterized by three-dimensional modeled, often aquatic, animals such as snakes, fish, lizards, frogs, and snails arranged onto large platters (wall plates, wall platters, chargers). Typically, each component is modeled and painted individually.

The name Palissy ware was also given by Minton & Co to their new range of polychrome lead-glazed pottery: “…what is now known as majolica was a range of brightly coloured low-temperature glazes launched in 1849 as 'Palissy Ware'. Only later did these become known as majolica ware.”.