Bernard Palissy was one of the most remarkable men who practised the art of the potter in France or in any other country. He was born about the year 1510, but his birthplace is not exactly known. He worked in his younger days and up to the period of his middle age at surveying, glass-making, portrait painting, and was also well skilled in natural sciences, but was not brought up to the trade of a potter. It was in the year 1542, at Saintes, that in order to increase his slender means he took to the making of earthenware. In writing his life he says: “It is now more than five-and-twenty years that a cup was shown to me of fashioned and enamelled clay, and of such beauty, that from that day I began to struggle with my own thoughts, and hence, heedless of my having no knowledge of the different kinds of argillaceous earth, I tried to discover the art of making enamel, like a man groping in the dark.” So he struggled on for fifteen years, with starvation and death often at his door, until at last he mastered his art, and produced ultimately, as he says, “those vessels of intermixed colours, after the manner of jasper.” The particular jasper enamel invented by Palissy is a deep rich glaze of a green and brownish variegated character. He made many “rustic pieces” as dishes, plates, and plaques, on which he admirably arranged reptiles, fishes, frogs, shells, insects of various kinds, fruits, leaves, acorns, &c., modelled in relief and covered with the jasper glaze. Most of these dishes were elliptical in shape and had broad rims (Fig. 50). [Illustration: Fig. 50.—Rustic Dish, with Reptiles and Fishes; Palissy Ware. (S.K.M.)] He decorated a “grotto” with his famous pottery at the Château of Ecouen for his patron the Constable de Montmorency, and similar grottoes at the Tuileries, and at Reux, in Normandy, for Catherine de’ Medici. Palissy made other forms of pottery besides his rustic pieces, such as ewers, bottles, hunting flasks, and dishes, ornamented with figures and other work. It is likely that the figure work was executed by his sons or relatives, Nicholas and Mathurin Palissy, who worked for Catherine de’ Medici on the Tuileries grotto. Many of the Palissy wares are similar in design to the _étains_ and pewter works of Briot and of other artists, as Prieur, Rosso, Gauthier, and Primaticcio. Openwork baskets and dishes and other modelled works were covered with the jasper glaze. Of the invention of the latter Palissy does not seem to have communicated the secret to his successors, for after his death the jasper glaze was imitated, but without much success, as appears evident from some specimens that are now in existence which were made from his moulds.