Bernard Palissy

Bernard Palissy was a French Huguenot potter, hydraulics engineer and craftsman who lived from about 1510 to 1589, famous for spending sixteen years attempting to imitate Chinese porcelain. He is best known for his rusticware, large decorated oval platters featuring small animals in relief among vegetation, often cast from real dead specimens; his style was widely imitated and later inspired Minton's Victorian majolica line, known as Palissy ware. He also made early contributions to geology, hydrology and the study of fossil formation, and died in the Bastille after being imprisoned as a Protestant during the French Wars of Religion. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/