While Palissy was still in early manhood, the famous and wonderful Henri Deux ware, or Faience d’Oiron, had been made. There are only sixty-seven pieces in existence; and the mystery which for a long time enveloped its manufacture, its rarity, and its beauty, have both surrounded it with a peculiar interest and rendered specimens almost fabulously valuable. At a sale in 1865, no less a sum than $5500 was given for a biberon. This ware was made about 1530, by a potter named François Cherpentier, and Jehan Bernart, secretary and librarian, both in the service of Hélène de Hangest, widow of Artus Gouffier, Sieur de Boisy. How this lady came to acquire a taste for ceramics, it is not, in view of what heretics call China-mania, hard to imagine. In any case, she built for Cherpentier and Bernart a workshop and furnace near the château of Oiron, and there the admirable Henri Deux ware was made. After the death of Hélène de Hangest, in 1537, Bernart appears to have continued his labors under the superintendence of her son. This faience, therefore, which has created more curiosity--the place of its manufacture was not known until 1862--than any other, and been more lavishly praised, owes its existence to the whim or enthusiasm of a woman. [Illustration: Fig. 232.--Henri Deux Ewer.] [Illustration: Fig. 233.--Biberon. Henri Deux Ware. (Malcolm Coll.)] It is an entirely exceptional ware. The paste is a pipe-clay, pure, fine, and white. Upon the first or inner layer, a second layer of a still finer and whiter clay was laid, in which the design was engraved. Colored pastes were then used for filling in the cavities, and the surface was then made level. So closely did the work resemble niello in metal that the name “Faience à Niellure” was given to the ware (Fig. 233). On the earlier works arabesques in zones, initials, and heraldic designs were thus engraved, chiefly in black, brown, and red. The zones are also frequently yellow, and the borders brown. A further ornamentation consists of frogs, shells, lizards, and wreaths in relief. After the death of Hélène de Hangest the decoration assumed an architectural character, and soon afterward the colors lost their beauty, the forms their elegance, and the art, as a whole, degenerated. For a period of about twenty years the faience was made which puzzled ceramists for over three centuries. Copies of this ware, by Minton of England, are in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in the collections of Mr. Walters, of Baltimore, and Mr. W. L. Andrews, New York. Having referred to the specialties of Saintes and Oiron, we now turn to the other centres of French ceramics, grouping all its porcelain together in a separate section. Beauvais, Poitou, and Hesdin have been already alluded to incidentally. Of the remaining seats of the faience manufactory in France, a few are selected for their importance as producing styles more or less distinctive, such as Rouen, Nevers, Moustiers, and Limoges.