page_title: Rouen faience
section_title: Monopoly period, 1647–97
hierarchical_section_title: Rouen faience / Rouen faience / Monopoly period, 1647–97
caption_attribution_description: English: France, Rouen, circa 1710 Furnishings; Serviceware Earthenware with tin glaze and enamel (grand feu faience) Gift of MaryLou and George Boone in honor of the museum's twenty-fifth anniversary (M.2010.51.3) Decorative Arts and Design Currently on public view: Hammer Building, floor 3
context_page_description: The city of Rouen, Normandy has been a centre for the production of faience or tin-glazed earthenware pottery, since at least the 1540s. Unlike Nevers faience, where the earliest potters were immigrants from Italy, who at first continued to make wares in Italian maiolica styles with Italian methods, Rouen faience was essentially French in inspiration, though later influenced by East Asian porcelain. As at Nevers, a number of styles were developed and several were made at the same periods.
  The earliest pottery, starting in the 1540s, specialized in large patterns and images made up of coloured tiles. A century later the king granted a fifty-year monopoly, and a factory was established by 1647. The wares this made are now hard to distinguish from those of other centres, but the business was evidently successful. When the monopoly expired in 1697 a number of new factories opened, and Rouen's finest period began, lasting until about the mid-century. The decoration of the best Rouen faience was very well-executed, with intricate designs in several styles, typically centred on ornament, with relatively small figures, if any.
context_section_description: In 1644, Nicolas Poirel, sieur (lord) of Grandval, obtained a fifty-year royal monopoly over the production of faience in Normandy.  A factory was set up by Edme Poterat (1612–87), who was probably an experienced potter, and had reached an arrangement with Poirel. Three pieces dated 1647 are fairly simply decorated in blue on white, with touches of yellow and green.
  In 1663 Colbert, recently made Louis XIV's finance minister, made a note that the Rouen faienceries should be protected and encouraged, sent designs, and given commissions by the king. By 1670, Poterat received part of the large and prestigious commissions for Louis XIV's Trianon de porcelaine, now lost. In 1674, Poterat bought out the monopoly from Poirel; he was now evidently prosperous, and acquired two lordships.
  On Edme Poterat's death in 1687, his younger son Michel took over the business. Another son, Louis, had started another faiencerie in 1673, and was later to set up a separate factory to make porcelain (see below).
  Before the end of the century Rouen faience, apparently led by Louis Poterat (d. 1696), had developed the lambrequin style of decoration, a "baroque scalloped border pattern", with "pendant lacework ornament, drapes and scrollwork", adapted from ornamental styles used in other types of decorative art, including book-bindings, lace and metalwork, and printed versions of them in design-books. Typically large and small elements alternate. This remained a key style, a "virtual trademark" for Rouen, well into the next century, and was often copied in other faience centres, including some outside France, and porcelain factories such as Rouen and Saint-Cloud porcelain. The term derived from scarfs tied to their helmets by medieval knights, and then heraldry, where it is called mantling in English. In French it had also become a term for the horizontal parts (pelmet or window valance) of curtains and hangings, especially around a bed.
caption: Polychrome style rayonnant lambrequin decoration, with a chinoiserie central scene. Made c. 1710, this is an early example in all these respects; 23.97 cm.
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