Bernard Palissy

To unlock the secret of enamel, he burned his own furniture. Bernard Palissy, a potter and scholar of the Renaissance, spent twenty years perfecting his glazes before developing his mottled enamel around 1555.

His rustic ceramic wares, plates and basins decorated in relief with fish, reptiles, and foliage cast from life, remain forever linked to his name.

Starting in 1566, he directed the construction of a rustic grotto at the Tuileries, first for the Constable de Montmorency and then for Catherine de Medicis. A Protestant, he was imprisoned several times and died at the Bastille around 1590.