As a style decays the colour as a rule becomes more gaudy, which applies to Rouen ware as to other varieties of fayence. The “Cornucopia pattern” belongs to the decadence period: this is full of unrestrained liberty both in form and colour. It ought to be mentioned that Louis Poterat, of Rouen, first discovered the secret of making the Chinese soft porcelain (_pâte tendre_) in France. Several pieces of this Rouen porcelain are preserved in the Museums at Sèvres and at Limoges. The Rouen School of Decoration has influenced modern pottery designers in France, Germany, Holland, and England, more than any other school; but unfortunately they all copied its later defects with greater zeal than in taking lessons from its earlier excellencies. Rouen ware was imitated in the Sinceny pottery, but this pottery was made by some workmen who had formerly belonged to Rouen, and established themselves at Sinceny in 1713, and copied the Rouen ware so closely that the copies have often been mistaken for the latter ware. At Paris, St. Cloud, Quimper, and Lille, imitations of Rouen ware have been attempted with success. The St. Cloud pottery is of a slatey blue colour. The pottery of Lille is a close imitation of Rouen ware, as the plate (Fig. 58) clearly shows. MOUSTIERS, in the south of France, was an important centre for enamelled pottery works, where a style of decoration was used that was a mixture of the Italian Urbino and the School of Rouen, the borders of the plates having the Rouen lambrequins, and the centres having figure subjects and landscapes, or, as in the later work, grotesques and ornament after the French artists, Callot and Berain. The colour was in shades of a deep blue (Fig. 59). Pierre Clérissy (1728) was the name of the first artist and also of his nephew, who continued the works after him in Moustiers. Polychrome decoration became common at a later date, when some Moustiers workmen, who had been to the Alcora potteries in Spain, introduced the Spanish style of colouring, then in great fashion, which consisted of bright orange yellow, light green, and blue outlines. The later Moustiers ware is decorated with festoons and ovals with figures or busts painted in them. MARSEILLES fayence is of a delicate and pure enamel, and is painted with flowers, shell fish, and insects, &c., which as a rule are thrown on or disposed in an irregular sort of way. Much of the decoration was Chinese or Rouen imitations, and little landscapes painted in red camaïen; gold was sometimes used in the stalks of the flowers. [Illustration: Fig. 58.—Plate, Lille Ware.] STRASBURG pottery, though classed as French, owed a good deal of its process of manufacture and general character to German methods of manipulation and decorative processes, as German potters were mostly employed in the works.