page_title: Nevers faience
section_title: European styles
hierarchical_section_title: Nevers faience / Styles / European styles
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Plat décor au pêcheur, v. 1758, Faïence stannifère / Nevers / Claude Guillaume Bigourat. Bordeaux, musée des Arts décoratifs et du Design.
context_page_description: The city of Nevers, Nièvre, now in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in central France, was a centre for manufacturing faience, or tin-glazed earthenware pottery, between around 1580 and the early 19th century. Production then gradually died down to a single factory, before a revival in the 1880s. In 2017, there were still two potteries making it in the city, after a third had closed. However the quality and prestige of the wares has gradually declined, from a fashionable luxury product for the court, to a traditional regional speciality using styles derived from the past.
  Nevers faience was one of the centres where the istoriato style of Italian maiolica was transplanted in the 16th century, and flourished for rather longer than in Italy itself. In the 17th century Nevers was then a pioneer in imitating Asian ceramic styles in Europe, within some decades followed by all producers of fine wares. The second half of the 17th century was Nevers' finest period, with several styles being made at the same time, including a grandiose Italianate Court style.
context_section_description: Wares were also produced in a wide variety of styles drawing on European sources, and these came to dominate production in the 18th century, as the quality of Nevers wares declined. By around 1730, a "decline of inventiveness at Nevers" becomes apparent, and later Nevers wares mostly copy Rouen faience or the new factories of the south.  After about 1750 the European porcelain factories largely replaced Asian exports as the dominant wares at the top of the market, but by this time most Nevers faience was faience populaire, usually cruder, cheaper, and more "popular" in taste.  Some armorial wares were produced.  Nevers is on the Loire and many pieces have painted images of the local style of river boats, and the long arched bridge over the river.
  Painted scenes, rather than floral or ornamental decoration, are usually in a single colour, most often blue and white, but also the "Persian" white on blue, or other colours.  In the 17th century a favourite source for scenes with figures was the immensely long pastoral novel or romance L'Astrée by Honoré d'Urfé, published between 1607 and 1627, and possibly the single most influential work of 17th century French literature.  The main characters, Astrée and Celadon, spend time disguised as a shepherd and shepherdess, and this is the most popular depiction; very wide hats tend to indicate the pastoral life.  These scenes do not seem to take their compositions from prints, even approximately, nor relate to any specific moment in the story.  They seem to begin around 1640.
  Other scenes show hunting and fishing, often drawing on Flemish prints, and a few specific historical moments. There is a dish with the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, with portraits of Cardinal Mazarin and Luis de Haro, his Spanish counterpart.  Many pieces, and many more borders, mix a range of elements: figures, birds and animals, flowers, and ornamental motifs, typically all at roughly the same size, for example a flower, rabbit, bird and man.
caption: Fisherman on the Loire near Nevers, painted by Claude Guillaume Bigourat (1735–1794), a matching dish has a hunting scene, dated 1758.[47]
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