page_title: Nevers faience
section_title: Asian styles
hierarchical_section_title: Nevers faience / Styles / Asian styles
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Plat d'apparat à décor de chinoiseries - Nevers - 1660-1680 - Louvre - Inv OA 12546 - Faïence de grand feu en camaïeu de bleu et manganèse sur émail blanc bleuté - Deux chinois dégustant des dattes suscitent la convoitise d'un héron (à droite) et d'un flamant ( à gauche)&#160;; diamètre 49.5 cm - Ce type de faïence "à décor chinois" est apparu à Nevers dans les années 1660 -1680 (premiers essais de chinoiseries dans ces ateliers) - Salle 37 - English: Large ceremonial basin with chinoiseries - Nevers - 1660-1680 - Louvre - Inv OA 12546 - Room 37
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: A technique unique to Nevers in French faience, used on some pieces from about 1650 for a few decades, was to stain all the clay from which the body was made either in bleu de Nevers or (much more rarely) a mustard yellow (Wedgwood did the same for their jasperware a century later).  This was then painted in white or other colours, using various styles, but rarely with more than two colours.  This style is traditionally known as "Persian" or bleu persan, as decoration in white on a rich blue ground is often seen in Persian pottery of the period.  However the bird and flower painted decoration seen in most examples of the "Persian" style in fact derives more from Turkish Iznik pottery, which  was reaching Europe through Italy.  The white-on-blue Persian style was copied elsewhere, sometimes even in English delftware.
  Nevers adopted Chinese vase shapes early in the 17th century, earlier than Dutch Delftware.  Some Nevers pieces clearly copy Chinese export porcelain in terms of their painted decoration, both the cheaper Kraak ware and better quality blue and white wares, whereas others have decoration based on Turkish, Persian or other Islamic Middle Eastern styles. These often have the blue background, which is unusual on Chinese export porcelain, where blue figures on a white ground are the norm in blue and white wares.
  Within Estienne's study group of 1874 pieces, the "Persian" family were the most numerous, with 547, then the Chinese with 374, so 921 pieces in Asian styles in total, almost half.  Nevers made the first Chinese-style blue and white wares in France, with production running between about 1650 and 1700. Chinese styles would then be taken up by factories in Normandy, especially following the foundation of the French East India Company in 1664.
  Much of the painting on pieces with a white ground copies that of Chinese blue and white Transitional porcelain (roughly 1625–90), a good deal of which was exported.  Chinese literati figures contemplating nature in a lush garden or landscape is a common subject in both countries, though the French treatments have some differences.   Nevers wares often have Chinese-style painting on purely Western shapes of vessel, and also the opposite, Western-style painting on very Chinese shapes.
  Unlike other French potteries, especially the porcelain factories of the early 18th century, influence from Japanese export porcelain styles such as Kakiemon is not found in Nevers wares.  Estienne sees the decoration à la bougie, with white imitating splashes of candle-wax on a blue ground (see below), as of Chinese inspiration.  They compare with some much earlier Song dynasty wares, in particular the "oil-spot" glazes of Jian ware (around the 12th or 13th centuries), though Estienne is unable to explain how awareness of these could have reached France in the 17th century.
caption: Large dish (1660-80, 49.5 cm) with Chinese-style musicians in a landscape, unusually using two colours, flanked by two "Persian style" bowls with European-style painting
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