Bernard Palissy

It appears that Palissy returned to his native district around 1539 married and set up house in Saintes. Palissy's workshops and kilns were destroyed but he himself was saved and by the interposition of the all-powerful constable he was appointed inventor of rustic pottery to the king and the queen-mother. In his memoirs Palissy tells us that he was apprenticed to a glass-painter and also learned the skill of land-surveying.

In the 19th-century Palissy's pottery became the inspiration for Mintons Ltd's Victorian majolica which was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851 under the name "Palissy ware". 1510 – c.