Opposite the entrance to the Sèvres Museum in the old town of Sèvres, in France, stands a handsome bronze statue of Bernard Palissy, the potter.  Within the museum are some exquisite pieces of pottery known as “Palissy ware.”  They are specimens of the art of Palissy, who spent the best years of his life toiling to discover the mode of making white enamel.

The story of his trials and sufferings in seeking to learn the secret, and of his final triumph over all difficulties, is an inspiring one.

Born in the south of France, as far back as the year 1509, Bernard Palissy did not differ much from an intelligent, high-spirited American boy of the twentieth century.  His parents were poor, and he had few of the advantages within the reach of the humblest child in the United States to-day.  In spite of poverty, he was cheerful, light hearted, and happy in his great love for nature, which distinguished him all through life.  The forest was his playground, his companions the birds, insects, and other living things that made their home there.

From the first, Nature was his chief teacher.  It was from her, and her alone, he learned the lessons that in after years made him famous both as a potter and a scientist.  The habit of observation seemed natural to him, for without suggestions from books or older heads, his eyes and ears noticed all that the nature student of our day is drilled into observing.

The free, outdoor life of the forest helped to give the boy the strength of mind and body which afterward enabled him, in spite of the most discouraging conditions, to pursue his ideal.  He was taught how to read and write, and from his father learned how to paint on glass.  From him he also learned the names and some of the properties of the minerals employed in painting glass.  All the knowledge that in after years made him an artist, a scientist, and a writer, was the result of his unaided study of nature.  To books he was indebted for only the smallest part of what he knew.

Happy and hopeful, sunshiny of face and disposition, Bernard grew from childhood to youth.  Then, when he was about eighteen, there came into his heart a longing to try his fortune in the great world which lay beyond his forest home.  Like most country-bred boys of his age, he felt that he had grown too large for the parent nest and must try his wings elsewhere.  In his case there was, indeed, little to induce an ambitious boy to stay at home.  The trade of glass painting, which in previous years had been a profitable one, had at that time fallen somewhat out of favor, and there was not enough work to keep father and son busy.

When he shouldered his scanty wallet and bade farewell to father and mother, and the few friends and neighbors he knew in the straggling forest hamlet, Bernard Palissy closed the first chapter of his life.  The second was a long period of travel and self-education.

He wandered through the forest of Ardennes, making observations and collecting specimens of minerals, plants, reptiles, and insects.  He spent some years in the upper Pyrénées, at Tarbes.  From Antwerp in the east he bent his steps to Brest, in the most westerly part of Brittany, and from Montpellier to Nismes he traveled across France.  During his wanderings he supported himself by painting on glass, portrait painting (which he practiced after a fashion), surveying, and planning sites for houses and gardens.  In copying or inventing patterns for painted windows, he had acquired a knowledge of geometry and considerable skill in the use of a rule and compass.  His love of knowledge for its own sake made him follow up the study of geometry, as far as he could pursue it, and hence his skill as a surveyor.

At this time young Palissy had no other object in life than to learn.  His eager, inquiring mind was ever on the alert.  Wherever his travels led him, he sought information of men and nature, always finding the latter his chief instructor.  He painted and planned that he might live to probe her secrets.  But the time was fast approaching when a new interest should come into his life and overshadow all others.

After ten or twelve years of travel, he married and settled in Saintes where he pursued, as his services were required, the work of glass painter and surveyor.  Before long he grew dissatisfied with the dull routine of his daily life.  He felt that he ought to do more than make a living for his wife and children.  There were two babies now to be cared for as well as his wife, and he could not shoulder his wallet, as in the careless days of his boyhood, and wander away in search of knowledge or fortune.

About this time an event happened which changed his whole life.  He was shown a beautiful cup of Italian manufacture.  I give in his own words a description of the cup, and the effect the sight of it had on him.  “An earthen cup,” he says, “turned and enameled with so much beauty, that from that time I entered into controversy with my own thoughts, recalling to mind several suggestions that some people had made to me in fun, when I was painting portraits.  Then, seeing that these were falling out of request in the country where I dwelt, and that glass painting was also little patronized, I began to think that if I should discover how to make enamels, I could make earthen vessels and other things very prettily, because God has gifted me with some knowledge of drawing.”

His ambition was fired at once.  A definite purpose formed itself in his mind.  He knew nothing whatever of pottery.  No man in France knew the secret of enameling, which made the Italian cup so beautiful, and Palissy had not the means to go to Italy, where he probably could have learned it.  He resolved to study the nature and properties of clays, and not to rest until he had discovered the secret of the white enamel.  Delightful visions filled his imagination.  He thought within himself that he would become the prince of potters, and would provide his wife and children with all the luxuries that money could buy.  “Thereafter,” he wrote, “regardless of the fact that I had no knowledge of clays, I began to seek for the enamels as a man gropes in the dark.”

Palissy was a young man when he began his search for the enamel; he was past middle life when his labors were finally rewarded.  Groping like a man in the dark, as he himself said, he experimented for years with clays and chemicals, but with small success.  He built with his own hands a furnace at the back of his little cottage in which to carry on his experiments.  At first his enthusiasm inspired his wife and neighbors with the belief that he would succeed in his efforts.  But time went on, and as one experiment after another failed or was only partially successful, one and all lost faith in him.  He had no friend or helper to buoy him up under his many disappointments.  Even his wife reproached him for neglecting his regular work and reducing herself and her children to poverty and want, while he wasted his time and strength in chasing a dream.  His neighbors jeered at him as a madman, one who put his plain duty aside for the gratification of what seemed to their dull minds merely a whim.  His poor wife could hardly be blamed for reproaching him.  She could neither understand nor sympathize with his hopes and fears, while she knew that if he followed his trade, he could at least save his family from want.  It was a trying time for both of them.  But who ever heard tell of an artist, inventor, discoverer, or genius of any kind being deterred by poverty, abuse, ridicule, or obstacles of any kind from the pursuit of an ideal!

After many painful efforts, the poor glass painter had succeeded in producing a substance which he believed to be white enamel.  He spread it on a number of earthenware pots which he had made, and placed them in his furnace.  The extremities to which he was reduced to supply heat to the furnace are set forth in his own words:  “Having,” he says, “covered the new pieces with the said enamel, I put them into the furnace, still keeping the fire at its height; but thereupon occurred to me a new misfortune which caused great mortification, namely, that the wood having failed me, I was forced to burn the palings which maintained the boundaries of my garden; which being burnt also, I was forced to burn the tables and the flooring of my house, to cause the melting of the second composition.  I suffered an anguish that I cannot speak, for I was quite exhausted and dried up by the heat of the furnace.  Further, to console me, I was the object of mockery; and even those from whom solace was due ran crying through the town that I was burning my floors, and in this way my credit was taken from me, and I was regarded as a madman.

“Others said that I was laboring to make false money, which was a scandal under which I pined away, and slipped with bowed head through the streets like a man put to shame.  No one gave me consolation, but, on the contrary, men jested at me, saying, ’It was right for him to die of hunger, seeing that he had left off following his trade!’ All these things assailed my ears when I passed through the street; but for all that, there still remained some hope which encouraged and sustained me, inasmuch as the last trials had turned out tolerably well; and thereafter I thought that I knew enough to get my own living, although I was far enough from that (as you shall hear afterward).”

This latest experiment filled him with joy, for he had at last discovered the secret of the enamel.  But there was yet much to be learned, and several years more of extreme poverty and suffering had to be endured before his labors were rewarded with complete success.  But it came at last in overflowing measure, as it almost invariably does to those who are willing to work and suffer privation and persevere to the end.

His work as a potter brought Palissy fame and riches.  At the invitation of Catherine de’ Medici, wife of King Henry II of France, he removed to Paris.  He established a workshop in the vicinity of the royal Palace of the Tuileries, and was thereafter known as “Bernard of the Tuileries.”  He was employed by the king and queen and some of the greatest nobles of France to embellish their palaces and gardens with the products of his beautiful art.

Notwithstanding his lack of schooling, Bernard Palissy was one of the most learned men of his day.  He founded a Museum of Natural History, wrote valuable books on natural science, and for several years delivered lectures on the same subject.  His lectures were attended by the most advanced scholars of Paris, who were astonished at the extent and accuracy of his knowledge of nature.  But he was as modest as he was wise and good, and when people wondered at his learning, he would reply with the most unaffected simplicity, “I have had no other book than the sky and the earth, known to all.”

No more touching story of success, in spite of great difficulties, than Bernard Palissy’s has been written.  It is bad to think that after the terrible trials which he endured for the sake of his art, his last years also should have been clouded by misfortune.  During the civil war which raged in France between the Huguenots and the Catholics, he was, on account of his religious views, imprisoned in the Bastile, where he died in 1589, at the age of eighty.