It is generally supposed that the table service, even among the rich, was very limited during the sixteenth century. A careful search of the inventories, however, shows that a complete service of faïence was to be found on the tables of the opulent in the first half of the sixteenth century. In 1532, we find that the widow of a minister of Francis I had two complete services of beautiful faïence: one entirely white, and the other “historied” with all kinds of coloured portraits. These two services were composed each of four dozen large and three dozen small plates, four _aiguières_, three round and one oval basin, three salts (_sallières_), eight pots, twelve _tazzi_, and three dozen spoons, some of ivory and some of wood and mother-of-pearl, “which we used in summer and autumn in serving collations of confitures, junkets, custards, syllabubs, fruits and cider to the great ladies who came to visit my daughters and myself; and in addition I have also many other vessels of the best pottery of Italy, Germany, Flanders, England and Spain.” Besides the above, this lady possessed forty-two vases, pots, _tazzi_ and plaques of porcelain “of the earliest days when Europeans went to China, which are of a beautiful white, and decorated with all kinds of little paintings.” The owner, who had evidently read Pigapheta, adds that the makers did not profit in their own lifetime by the manufacture of this “_ravissante_” porcelain, because it had to be buried in the earth for a century in order to come to perfection. Another reason why it should be prized is that it is “so healthy that if it is soiled with poison by evil doers who want to injure anybody, it will immediately fall to pieces rather than suffer the vile draughts with which people would ravage our entrails.” At this date, the Oriental wares had not yet supplanted those that came through Turkey, Asia Minor and Egypt by way of Venice and other Italian ports. Among the lady’s possessions we find twenty-eight vases, pots, cups and little earthenware bowls of Turkish work, decorated on the necks and handles with little tufts resembling horses’ tails. She also had four hundred beautiful glasses of all colours, and other Venetian crystal vessels, “adorned with the gayest fancies that the glass-blowers were capable of inventing, with which we delighted the eyes of royalty and the great ministers of state at the great entertainments we gave.”