FAIENCE PATRIOTIQUE

French 18th-century earthenware, chiefly plates and jugs, decorated with themes drawn from the French Revolution and its ideology or from national political events. The first example of a faience patriotique was a Moustiers dish occasioned by the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745, but it was the Revolution that inspired the greatest production of faience patriotique. A number of early plates displayed the Royalist fleur-de-lis, but these were soon replaced by countless Republican phrases and symbols. Made throughout the country, mostly at Nevers and notably at Rouen, Paris, and Beauvais, as well as in the Vende, in Auxerre and Artois, and in the Midi, the great volume of faience patriotique covered the total range of Revolutionary imagery. Lively, naive, and colourful ceramic pictures proliferatedthe Gallic cock, the Phrygian cap, plows and oak trees, draped flags, and the Bastilleas did slogans pertaining to liberty, the Third Estate, agriculture, and the rights of man. Although produced in vast numbers, faience patriotique has inspired many forgeries and replicas.