Interest in Bernard Palissy’s work in the 19th century was part of a much wider rediscovery of the decorative arts of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This taste for the arts of the past melded with the highlighting of this 16th-century ceramicist as an exemplary figure of the republican ideal, as a son of the people ready to sacrifice everything for his art. The painter Alfred Corplet described himself as a ‘repairer of objets d’art’, particularly Limoges enamel but also Palissy and Saint-Porchaire ware, then highly prized and widely imitated. He gave the Conservatoire this basket decorated with florets and, on the underside, with enamel flamed in the Palissy fashion in 1882, after having attended the courses of Professor Victor de Luynes, who taught ceramics, glass and dyestuffs at the Conservatoire until 1904.
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