Pilgrim flask (Full front)

Used for display in an aristocratic household, this pilgrim flask is one of the earliest surviving examples of stoneware produced in France. The royal coat of arms of France, three fleurs-de-lis, and of the Dauphiné region, a dolphin, decorate both the front and the back. The brilliant cobalt-oxide glaze was a precious material probably imported from the Middle East via Spain.

Scholars believe that this pottery, known as grès bleu de Puisaye, began to be produced towards the end of the 1400s when François de Rochechouart, chamberlain of the duc d'Orléans and of the future king of France, Louis XII, established a stoneware factory in Saint-Armand. Rochechouart was married to Blanche d'Aumont, a native of the Beauvais region, where stoneware was produced from at least the 1450s. She might have helped bring the technology of stoneware production to the Puisaye area of Burgundy.