PALLISSY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Pallissy

Pallissy n. Bernard Pallissy, the great French potter, was born in Agen, in 1509, and wandered as a glass and portrait painter until he married and settled in Saintes in 1538. While working here as a surveyor his attention was attracted by an enameled cup, and he determined to discover the process and after 16 years of continuous labor and experiment in which he used all his resources and burned the tables and floors for fuel, he succeeded, and though imprisoned in 1562 as a Huguenot he was released by royal edict and appointed "inventor of figulines" to the king. He removed to Paris in 1564, and through the aid of Catherine de Medici was saved from the massacre of St. Bartholomew. From 1575 to 1584 he gave a course of lectures on physics and natural history, demonstrating the origin of springs, the formation of fossil shell, and the best method of purifying water. In 1585, however, he was again arrested as a Huguenot and imprisoned in the Bastille, where he died in 1589. See H. Morley's Palissy the Potter.