Hello and welcome to Insider Insights.
I'm Emma Wegner, Associate Educator in Public Programs and Creative Practice at The Met.
While the Museum is temporarily closed, we're providing closer looks at objects from the collection
and exhibitions with Met experts. We hope you'll join us as we debut a new program
in the series each week. Today we're joined by my colleague
Iris Moon, Assistant Curator in European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, who is going
to discuss an important recent gift of 19th century French and Portuguese ceramics
whose forms, subjects, and techniques were inspired by the work a 16th century
French craftsmen, engineer, and innovator Bernard Palissy.
Iris, thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you, Emma and thank you all for joining us today.
I'm going to be speaking about a recent gift that we received
from Wallis Katz in memory of her husband Marshall Katz
and in celebration of the Museum's 150th Anniversary
of 22 pieces of French and Portuguese Palissy Ware.
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Palissy Ware refers to, um, a group of glazed earthenware ceramics
made in the 19th century that was inspired by the work of
the 16th century potter, engineer, and naturalist Bernard Palissy.
And here you see an example by a follower in our collection
and one of the most famous, um, aspects of his ceramics, um,
was what was called rustic figurines where he would
essentially take creatures that he had encountered and use them and cast them
from life and use them as decorative elements for his platters.
So here you see a lizard and a fish and a snake.
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Now it was in the 19th century that Bernard Palissy
really became celebrated as a hero potter, um, and you can see here
that one of the most famous episodes in his career was - ah- he was so sort of desperate
to figure out the secrets of - of ceramics and to learn the crafts, uh, the secrets of
the trade that he burned down his furniture and used as fuel for his kiln
and this really became a celebrated episode that transformed him into a
romantic period - a romantic hero, um, for 19th century viewers of his work.
And it was an episode that apparently wasn't just, uh, celebrated in France,
but in Japan as well.
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One of the first people in France to have rediscovered - credited with rediscovering
the techniques of Palissy, was Charles-Jean Avisseauso, who you see here.
And Avisseauso was recognized for the great naturalism of his pieces
and how he was able to really take forms that he'd seen in nature and transform them
into works of ceramics. And he always made sure to sign his pieces
which tells us that he really saw them as works of art and not just
platters to eat off of.
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Now, 19th century Palissy Ware raises a lot of questions about how they were
actually made and though there were a variety of techniques, um, for Georges Pull
it was really important for him to recreate exactly the techniques used by
Palissy in the 16th century and that entailed live casting of these creatures,
such as lizards and the snakes that you see here. We don't know for sure how much
of the pieces he modeled, um, and how much - how many of them he used live casts of,
but it's likely that he would have used live casts of lizards, mainly because
he was a taxidermist before he became a potter.
But the more you look at the 19th century examples of Palissy Ware,
the more you realize that they're quite different from the 16th century examples.
And the sort of life stories of each - uh - potter
is also quite fascinating. For example, Renoleau, um, didn't start off as a potter,
but, uh, was actually a hairdresser before he became a potter
and the story is, is that he was so obsessed with making ceramics
that he left a client's hair half-cut, um, in order to go check on his kiln
and didn't go back to finish the haircut.
The biggest difference between 16th century Palissy and 19th century works
was the venues for display. And many of the potter's displayed
their works at the Universal Exposition and specifically we know that a number of
them displayed their works at the 1867 one in Paris.
Many of these pieces were displayed as parts
of the faiences francaises where the French faiences, uh, display
at the exposition and faiences was a sort of catch-all term to refer
to glazed earthenware during the period.
And Victor Barbizet was especially signaled out -
singled out for his, uh, extraordinary sizes. So the platter you see here is about
three feet across. Um, and the vibrancy of his glazes and one critic described
admiring the - the lizards on the border sunning their emerald colored scales.
So the sort of lifelike and vivid quality of these aquatic inspired platters
was really, um, really something.
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We don't know for sure, but it's highly likely that Jules Verne
would have seen these examples of Palissy Ware. We know that he
was highly inspired but the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition. That was where he
encountered a model of the first submarine to have been launched in 1853
and he would have been able to promenade in the aquariums that had been designed
as grottoes, um, for people to sort of walk around and see the sea creatures behind the glass.
And of course these elements were the inspiration for his 1869 novel
"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and the first illustrated version emerged in 1871.
And it's really wonderful and futuristic tale, really one of the earliest forms of science fiction
where Captain Nemo, this enigmatic, um, sea captain drives his submarine, the Nautilus,
around the seven seas and he happens to pick up
three sort of landlubbers, um, including Dr. Aronnax
who is a scientist and specialist in the sea and Dr. Aronnax narrates this sort of
experience of going underwater on this high-tech submarine at a time when
submarines really hadn't been invented properly and, um, it's this really
fantastical usage of all the technology that Jules Verne had encountered at the
Universal Exposition and incorporating that into this, um, fictional submarine.
But one of the most surprising aspects of the novel is the interior of
the submarine which is outfitted in this incredibly luxurious Second Empire Salon
filled with the finest works of art, rare shells, and really all the wonders
of the earth, um, placed under the sea. And I think it's really fascinating how
Alphonse de Neuville, one of the early illustrators of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,"
chooses to depict the dining room in
this kind of historical revival Renaissance interior filled with sort of
Renaissance inspired furniture and decorative arts.
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And one can easily imagine that Jules Verne
may have been inspired by some of the Palissy Ware
that was on display for imagining this aquatic world, um, under - under the sea.
Thank you.