Bernard Palissy

Bernard Palissy (c. 1510 to c. 1589) was a French Huguenot potter, hydraulics engineer and craftsman, famous for struggling for sixteen years to imitate Chinese porcelain and for his highly decorated rusticware platters with small animals in relief among vegetation. He lived most of his life in Saintonge, where he worked as a portrait painter, glass painter and land surveyor and was commissioned by the crown to survey the salt marshes. He is also known for his contributions to the natural sciences, and is famous for discovering principles of geology, hydrology and fossil formation. A Protestant, he was imprisoned during the French Wars of Religion and sentenced to death, and he died of poor treatment in the Bastille in 1589.