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21 Oval basin decorated with “rustiques figulines”

The French potter Bernard Palissy (c. 1510– c. 1590) created a distinctive style of pottery in the late sixteenth century, decorating it with lifelike motifs made using molds taken from actual plants and animals. His remarkable pottery caught the eye of royalty and nobility, including Catherine de’ Medici, queen of France. During the Renaissance, people became increasingly interested in understanding the natural world through observation and reasoning, and Palissy’s pottery truly embodied the spirit of that age.

This basin was produced in the seventeenth century in a workshop that had inherited Palissy’s techniques. The various plants and animals we see here exhibit realistic textures that seem to invite us to reach out and touch them. It is still unknown what such earthenware would have been used for; it may have been used in ceremonies, or perhaps it was made solely to be admired.