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 of Nevers faience 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."Désormais, Nevers ne compte plus que deux faïenceries", Lara Payet, 1 April 2017, Le Journal du Centre (in French); "les faienciers actuels", faiencedenevers.fr – still the case in 2020 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 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 became 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.McNab, 12, 18, 20–21; Chaffers, 150; V&A, Nevers Jardiniere
By the time of the French Revolution, Nevers wares had ceased to be fashionable and expensive,Garnier, 274–275 but the relatively crudely painted faiences patriotiques wares commenting on political events have great interest and charm.Though not to Garnier, 275, who is very rude about them A late 19th-century revival concentrated on high-quality revivalist wares recreating past glories.
History The tradition owes its origin to Louis Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers (1539–1595), a half-French and half Italian politician and courtier who married the heiress of the Duchy of Nevers, which then still gave him great powers in the County and Duchy of Nevers. He had been born in Mantua, near several centres for Italian maiolica, which had already spread to Rouen and Lyon, and encouraged some Italian potters to move to the city. Giulio Gambin was already in Lyon and the Conrade brothers (Corrado in Italy) came from Albisola, who would found the dynasty that dominated Nevers production for a century.Coutts, 28; Moon; McNab, 12; Britannica
Nevers already had a local unglazed pottery industry, and was a very suitable location for making faience. The city was near deposits of excellent pottery clay, an exceptionally good type of sand for making ceramic glaze, forests for wood for the kilns, and was on the major Loire river. The earliest dated piece by the Italians is from 1587.Estienne, 46
In 1603, the brothers received a monopoly from Henri IV for the making of wares in the style of Faenza, whether painted polychrome or with white grounds, and a generation later Antoine Conrade, son of Dominique, was made to the young Louis XIV in 1644.Coutts, 27–28 This was repeated in the next generation for another Dominique Conrade, given his brevet in 1672.Garnier, 270
The Conrade monopoly was not effective for long, with a second factory starting in 1632, and by 1652 there were four different potteries in Nevers, including one founded by Pierre Custode, whose family became the other main Nevers dynasty of potters.Garnier, 270; Chaffers, 148
The French faience industry received a huge boost when, late in his reign in 1709, Louis XIV pressured the wealthy to donate their silver plate, previously what they normally used to dine, to his treasury to help pay for his wars. There was an "overnight frenzy" as the elite rushed to get faience replacements of the best quality. Nevers garden vases in blue and white were prominently used in the gardens of the Chateau de Versailles.Moon; McNab, 30
The success of the wares led to several other factories opening in the early 18th century and in 1743, the government limited the number to eleven to prevent flooding the market. In 1760, a twelfth was permitted. By this period Nevers wares had been largely replaced at the top end of the market by other makers, but were producing large quantities of less expensive wares for a broader market. They did not attempt to compete with the elegant Rococo style of the French porcelain factories, which was attempted rather successfully by some makers of faience, for example the Veuve Perrin factory in Marseille. All twelve Nevers factories (still including the Conrade and Custode ateliers) were still in operation in 1790, but a commercial treaty with Great Britain in 1786 led to the French market being flooded by cheaper and better English creamwares, leading to crisis for all French manufacturers of faience, and by 1797 six had ceased operations, with the other six having reduced their workforce by half.Chaffers, 148–149, who lists all 12; Badillet, 4; Osborne, 133; Britannica
By this time, European porcelain was becoming cheaper and more reliable, and making life difficult for producers of high-quality earthenware across Europe.Osborne, 133; Moon The Nevers response was to produce topical faiences patriotiques with which the English were unlikely to compete (although they had done excellent business supplying the new American republic with patriotic wares).Britannica
In 1838, 700 workers were reported to be employed,de Saint-Fargeau, Girault, Guide pittoresque du voyageur en France: contenant la statistique ..., Volume 2, 11, 1838, google books but by 1846, only six factories remained, and by 1850, only five factories remained.Badillet, 4 A porcelain manufactury in Nevers was also mentioned in 1844 by Alexandre Brongniart, but little is known about it.Pottery and Porcelain: A Guide to Collectors by Frederick Litchfield p.219
The manufacture du Bout du monde ("End of the World" factory) was founded in 1648, and followed the general pattern of the Nevers factories. By 1875, its fortunes had reached a low ebb and it was bought by Antoine Montagnon who had ambitious plans to relaunch it to supply the market for revivalist wares imitating 17th-century pieces, often large and complex pieces.Dominique Romeyer, "Vingt-cinq dirigeants se sont succédé à la tête de la faïencerie Montagnon en 367 ans", Le Journal du Centre 19 May 2015 By 1881, it was the only factory left in Nevers. The Montagnon factory (faïencerie) was successful for over a century, with 50 employees around 1900, and its wares exhibited at international exhibitions, but the factory, by then the oldest in France, finally closed in 2015.Mont In 2020, two factories remained in production, both mainly making traditional styles."les faienciers actuels", faiencedenevers.fr
Styles The list of stylistic periods devised by the French authority du Broc de Segange in his 1863 book on Nevers faience is still often repeated,Chaffers, 150 though perhaps needing some adjustment. It shows several styles in use at particular dates, which is certainly the case: 1600–1660: Italian style 1650–1750: Chinese and Japanese style 1630–1700: Persian style 1640–1789: Franco-Nivernais style 1700–1789: Rouen manufactory style 1730–1789: Tradition de Moustiers, imitating the faience of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence 1770–1789: Gout de Saxe (i.e., Meissen style) 1789 on : Decadence.
Françoise Estienne, in the 1980s, divided Nevers production in the 17th century (extended slightly at both ends) into eleven "families" based on the decoration of a study group of 1874 pieces, mainly in French museums, looking at both subjects and styles.Estienne, 45 and throughout. The locations of the group are described in note 6 on p. 47 – examples outside France appear to have been ignored completely.
Italian style
The Italian immigrants continued at Nevers the (narrative) style that was already in decline in Italy, until at least 1660. This used as many colours as were available using the grand feu technique of a single firing for the clay, glaze and painting, which required a firing temperature that only a few pigments could tolerate. As was usual in Italy by 1580, designs were mostly adapted from prints,Coutts, 27–28; McNab, 12 and the outline set out on the pot by a or stencil, pushing charcoal dust through pin-pricks in a paper drawing or tracing from a print.McNab, 12
The early pieces did not generally use distinctive marks or inscriptions, though sometimes painting "Nevers" on the base of important pieces, perhaps with a date – the earliest of these is 1589, on a dish in the Louvre.Coutts, 28 As with painted Limoges enamel of the previous century, with which Nevers decoration has some similarities, a high proportion of religious subjects illustrate Old Testament subjects. As with Italian pieces, the subjects, especially those from the Old Testament or classical mythology, tended to be named on the base, sometimes even with the bible chapter noted.Wilson, 202 for an Italian example; Metropolitan Museum page for the "Joseph and his brothers" plate illustrated here.
There is a good deal of uncertainty in the attribution of pieces between the Nevers workshops, and between Nevers pieces and those of other centres.Chaffers, 149, 151–153 has an illustrated list of marks The large dish with The Gathering of Manna illustrated below, a well-known piece, had been assumed to be Italian, and 16th century, until recently. Though there are still uncertainties, it is now thought to be moulded from an Italian dish (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London), then painted as a matching pair of that.Wilson, 334–337 A curious aspect of Nevers faience is that it never succeeded in producing a good red colour, unlike Rouen and other centres, the absence of which often enables Nevers pieces to be distinguished.Garnier, 275; Lane, 11
As well as the scenes covering a whole surface, many Nevers pieces use grotesque motifs, usually on the raised border of plates or dishes, but also sometimes in the central space. These were used in Urbino maiolica in the 1580s, and also in painted Limoges enamel. In Nevers, they might surround central decoration in all styles except the Chinese, and gradually acquire their own local character.Estienne, 51
Asian styles
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.McNab, 18–20, 30 no 12; Estienne, 57; Some sources, for example Lane, 12 say that only the glaze was coloured. The white-on-blue Persian style was copied elsewhere, sometimes even in English delftware.Poole, 34
Nevers adopted Chinese vase shapes early in the 17th century, earlier than Dutch Delftware.McNab, 18; Lane 11 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.McNab, 18–20; Estienne, 57–59The Grove encyclopedia of materials and techniques in art Gerald W. R. Ward p.38