"It was so late as the year 1839 that M. André Pottier, a French writer on art, first announced to the world the existence of the singular species of pottery now known as 'Henri-Deux' ware. He gave it as his opinion that it was the production of Florentine artists working in France. Until thus brought to the knowledge of connoisseurs, the very existence of this exquisite ware had been forgotten. It soon, however, became famous. Every corner of Europe was ransacked for specimens of it. Dukes, princes, and millionaires, contended with the heads of national museums for the few pieces still to be found. No ware ever yet became so costly; for every hundred pounds that a rare piece of Sèvres or maiolica will fetch, the 'Henri-Deux' will bring its thousand. As yet only about fifty pieces have come to light; and of these fifty more than one-half have found their way into the galleries of our wealthier English amateurs. "Those who see a specimen of this rare and precious pottery for the first time are apt to be extremely disappointed. They see a vase, or a ewer, or a candlestick, of fantastic shape, covered with a thin, greenish-yellow glaze, the coloring not by any means brilliant, and the surface seemingly inlaid and incrusted with the innumerable details of a most elaborate ornamentation, made out in quiet browns, blacks, and sad neutral tints. Nothing is less striking to a casual or an ignorant observer--nothing in the whole range of decorative art so absolutely exquisite in design and effect to the cultivated appreciation of a connoisseur in Renaissance-work. "No sooner was the ware discovered than speculations began as to its maker, its date, and the locality of its fabrication. On no single point did the ten or twelve French writers on the subject come to an agreement, and a certain amount of unsolved mystery still attaches to all these points. There is no so-called 'potter's mark' on any of the pieces except one, and this solitary mark is not recognizable as that of any known potter. It may be tortured into a monogram, or assumed to be a device, at the pleasure of those who form their various theories on the origin of the ware. "The pieces are decorated with the arms of French royal and noble families. One piece has on it the salamander surrounded by flames, the device of Francis I. of France; and very many out of the fifty bear the well-known monogram of Henry II. worked into the ornamentation of the surface--a circumstance which has given the ware its name. The date is, therefore, more or less fixed to the short period between 1540 and 1560, or twenty years. As to the nationality of the artist, the best authorities join in thinking he must have been a Frenchman, because the work is essentially of the style of the somewhat distinctive French Renaissance then prevailing. The precise locality of its production could only be inferred to be somewhere in Touraine, because a majority of the pieces can be traced as coming from that province.