Palissy the Potter

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 51, 16 March 1937, Page 13

Palissy the Potter

Earthenware Fit For kings

Fthe 18th century Henry the Elghth, that jovial sportsman, founded the Church. of England; Francis the First, , the, accomplished ladles' man, founded the Colleg'e de France, and Bernard Palissy, soa ctf an obscure artisan, founded the magniflcent tradition of Freach ceramics and . distinguished himself as the only potter in history to. reject with scorn the pieading of a King (writes MargueriCe • Mahood in the Melboume Argus). Palissy is believed to have been born about 1510 at Ua Chapelle Biron. Trained . as a glasier and glass-painter, he was a fiery youth full of gnawing ambition. * • • P 1539, at an age then considered mature, he married and settied down at Saintes as a glass-maker and land surveyor, with intervals of experimenting in physics and chemistry. He added to his knowledge of natural history by perf^rming an autopsy on two of his children who had died mysteriously, to find that their deaths were due to the infestation of a worm common in the soil of the distrlcfc. He was always Interested in curious things. Someone who had probably been told that Palissy was "a bit of a scientisfc," took him an earthenware or porcelain goblet such as he had never seen before. "Whatever it was, porcelain from unknown China, or the new Italian majolica from Ferrara, as is variously guessed, Palissy was greatly excited about it. He had a definite aim at last, and was on fire with a fierce determination. He would make earthenware "fit for s kings and princes,". as he himself said. "I thought," he says, "that if I could discover the invention of making glazes, I should be able to make vessels of earth and other things of beautiful design, because Heaven had given me to understand something of painting; and therefore, without considering that I had no knowledge of argillaceous earth, I set about seeking glazes like a man who gropes in the dark." * * * TTE made hundreds of trials which were fired in glass-makers' furnaces, in potters' furnaces, in furnaces he designed himself. They were all failures. His family and the neighbouring busybodies— "a heap of old women," Palissy says— scolded him for giving up a good living. They said he was mad or worse. Ha was jeered at in the streets as a sorcerer, or a counterfeiter. His neighbours said that it was not the strain of his experiments but the excesses of his private life that made him thin and haggard. Everyone knew what he was about better than he did, for gossipers then were much as they are now. He returned jibe for jibe, but he pergLsted. At last, when he thought that he had fche perfect formula, he built on borrowed money another furnace. Unable to pay workmen, his fingers were scraped to the bone, and his shirt had not been dry on his back for a month when he completed the task Ifc was before the days of coal firing, forced draught, and

automatic stoking, and for six days and nights he fed the furnace with faggots, fcrying to melt his glazes. Though he scorched his face and strained his eyes at the' s'lght-hole, the glaze showed no signs of melting. Rather than waste the hard-won heat he ground up a more fusible mixture— and then the supply of wood gave out. • • • TTE tore down the props of fruit trees X1 in his garden. The glaze was still obstinate. He could not buy more wood. He wrenched down the garden trellis, smashed up his house furniture. The fire was sfcill hungry and fche glaze sfcill slow to fuse. He tore up the heavy oaken flooring of his house. Madame and the family raved and screeched, but dared not interfere with the grimy demon who thrust their goods into the roarlng flremouths. "Even those who should have helped me," Palissy says, "went crying round the town that I was burning my floors . . . and they thought me mad, ; and caused me to lcse what little credit I had." In the besfc fictional tradition, the were fr6m this heroic firing should have been astoundingly lovely— but it was not. However, enough of the materlal was success-. ful to show Palissy that he was on the right track. In the next few years each experimenfc was more promising. There was kure to be something good from each firing. Palissy's creditors rushed to the house whenever one of his kilns was to be drawn; after one partly successful firiBg they oflered to take the least damaged pleces in part-paymenfc of their accounts. Infuriated, Palissy smashed the whole batch. "To let them go," he says, "would have been a discredit and a lowering of my honour." • * • TN the end he was triumphant. |lis pieces were unique. His fiery energy found apt expression in the leaping, curlnotorlous a Huguenofc could not escape the Renaissance, with its wealth of detail pierced or moulded. Instead of creditors, the princes of France hastened to attend fche drawing of his kilns. 'T'HE massacre of Sfc. Bartholomew, in 1572, almost ended his career; so notorious a Hugenot could not escape nofcice. Bufc it was not until 16 years later that his stormy journey ended in the Bastille. The young King Henri III. loth to lose so fine an artist, went personally to beg him to turn Cafcholic, or he would have to leave him to his fate. "Sire," said the intransigent old potter, "I was already willing to die. Had I any regret, it would have vanished on hearing the great King of France say, 'I am compelled.' That is a condition to which I cannot be reduced . . . because your whole people have not the power to compel a staple potter to bend the knee before taages which he himself has made." He defeated the executioner by dyin? peacefully in his cell.