The most famous products were the “Greybeards” or “Bellarmines”, round-bodied vessels with facemasks, said to be inspired by Cardinal Bellarmine who was very anti-Protestant.

16th century Bellarmines - courtesy
Louwers Antiques and E&H Manners

In the 16th century large quantities of salt glazed mugs/tankards, including Bellarmines, were exported to Britain. Some had a mottled brown glaze known as tigerware. Tudor royals started a fashion decorating these stoneware mugs with elaborate silver mountings. At the start of the 17th century moulded details were highlighted in opaque tin-based colours over the glaze, the first use of overglaze painting on pottery in Europe, with technology provided by Bohemian glass enamellers. The earliest surviving specimen is dated to 1622. Around 1630 AD ovoid jugs were produced that were decorated with stamped floral and leaf designs with blue and purple glazes.

17th century German tankard - source
Wikipedia via Leoboudr

Towards the end of the 17th century the decoration followed the Baroque style. German stoneware technology was very influential in British potting, and stoneware was made in Britain in quantity from the 17th century.

France

Lead glaze was common in France by the 13th century. Fine majolica/faience was also made in France from the early 16th to 18th centuries. It was developed with the assistance of itinerant Italian potters, and subjects for decoration were spread by copying engravings.

French faience, saucer from Moustiers
decorated by Salome, 1740 AD, and deep
bowl with Revolutionary subject, 1793 -
courtesy R&G McPherson Antiques

Various French cities were active in its manufacture, including Lyons (1512 AD), Rouen (1526 AD), Quimper and Nevers. Nevers was particularly noted for fine Baroque designs. An interesting range of designs was by a potter called Palissy who experimented with coloured glazes from around 1539 AD as he struggled to perfect a fine enamel on earthenware. He was so poor that he had to burn his furniture and flooring to fire his kiln! However he succeeded in 1548 AD and lived to enjoy fame and fortune. The elite paid huge prices for his unique large dishes and ewers with their surface decorated with grotesque reptiles, fishes and other animals in very high relief, excellently glazed in blue, green, purple and brown.

Palissy sea life platter, 1550 AD - source
Wikipedia via Mary Harrsch

Early in the 18th century Marseilles became a centre for faience production, as was French Strasbourg where overglaze painting was introduced about 1740 AD. Indianische blumen (Eastern flower) decoration became popular, copied from Japanese porcelain, and Deutsche blumen followed. Both faience and Chinese porcelain started to be used for banquet table decoration in the 17th century that previously had been provided by confectioners working in sugar. After 1800 AD most French potteries copied Wedgwood’s “Creamware” (also called faience fine).

12.1.3 Porcelain

The Chinese had put as much study and effort into its ceramics as Europe had put into paintings and sculpture, so it is no surprise they achieved porcelain much earlier. Emissaries brought a few pieces of this beautiful and delicate porcelain from China to Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. However, various approaches from Pope Innocent IV in the 13th century, and in 1249 AD by king Louis IX of France, were rebuffed by the Mongol leaders, so China remained “closed”. Many more pieces were imported once trade had opened up with Asia in the Ming period, in particular there was an increasing trade in Chinese porcelain fostered by Marco Polo’s report of his travels to China published in 1277 AD and his book dictated in 1298 AD (in a Genoan prison). This was the first broad picture of China to reach the west and contained the first account of the production process for porcelain, including his description that porcelain was “made from the crumbling earth and clay that was left for 30-40 years exposed to rain, wind and sun”. In fact he used the name porcelain for the first time, likening it to the translucent shell of the cowrie or sea snail. This shell was used as money in China and he thought they resembled piglets or “porceletta” .