“In the sixteenth century, French potter Bernard Palissy (1510–1590) stunned the public with his brightly glazed platters covered with high-relief snakes, frogs, lizards, fish, lobsters, shells, flowers, leaves, and vines. Nothing like these highly original trompe l’oeil dishes had been attempted or conceived of before. Palissy’s plates were encrusted with amphibians and reptiles so realistic they looked as if they were alive, and his artifice of mixing animals, shells, and flowers in juxtapositions that would never be encountered in nature dazzled the public.”

—Suzanne Stauback, from Clay: The History and Evolution of Humankind’s Relationship with Earth’s Most Primal Element, 2005.