French pottery is earthenware and stoneware made in France, as distinct from French porcelain. It includes tin-glazed faience, lead-glazed provincial wares, salt-glazed stoneware, fine cream-coloured earthenware and the art pottery of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
One of the earliest celebrated French potters was Bernard Palissy, whose sixteenth-century dishes with lifelike reptiles and plants in coloured glazes inspired imitations for centuries. Faience flourished from the seventeenth century in Nevers, Rouen, Moustiers, Marseille and Strasbourg, and later at Quimper in Brittany, where brightly painted peasant figures became a long-running speciality. During the nineteenth century large factories at Gien, Sarreguemines, Creil and Montereau produced printed and decorated tablewares, while Longwy became known for its enamelled wares. The Barbotine movement and the Art Nouveau potters, including Clément Massier and his circle in the south, introduced iridescent lustres and naturalistic forms, and after the Second World War Vallauris became a centre of studio pottery. Garden lovers also value the large glazed olive jars of Provence. Collectors should note factory marks and the softness of the body, as faience chips easily and much has been restored.
