French Country · Encyclopedia of objects
Faience
Faience need not be very old or carry a great name to charm collectors. Popular figures, devotional pieces and the barber's bowl all found a place in country houses. (La faïence)
Jacquot jugs (pots Jacquot)
Flanders · after 1850
These figure jugs first appeared in Flanders after 1850. Always seated on his barrel, the Jacquot is a cheerful, popular Bacchus.
Virgin and Child candle holders (Vierges à l'enfant)
Quimper, Auxerre, Nevers, Malicorne
These naive figures wear a hollow crown that held a candle. The tallest is from Quimper; another is eighteenth-century faience from the Auxerre region; the one with a striped robe is from Nevers; the uncrowned Virgin in brown is from Malicorne in the Sarthe.
Barber's bowl (plat à barbe)
Auxerre region · 18th century
The notch in the rim fitted the neck. In villages the bowl hung on the barber's wall; in middle-class houses the master had his own, sometimes marked with his name.
Bedside holy-water stoup (bénitier de chevet)
Nevers · 17th century
Small bedside stoups were treasured in Catholic France, although the Church, which recommended a crucifix at home, never urged the faithful to own one. This one, crowned by a shell, is seventeenth-century Nevers faience. Do not confuse pieces of this period with copies made around 1820 in the same designs.
Source: Les Trésors de France: vieux métiers et objets d'autrefois (Éditions Rustica, Détours en France collection, 1995), pp. 136–137. Descriptions summarize the book's reportage and captions; the book was published in 1995, so workshops, people, prices and figures are described as the reporters found them then, and some workshops may since have closed or changed hands.