Palissy's Plates: Replicating Renaissance Art (Pottery Documentary) | Real Stories

[Music] shawn greenhouse was once a prolific forger from ancient carvings to modern paintings there was nothing he couldn't make like putting in an old window but a spell in prison convinced him to renounce his past so he's teamed up with oxford historian dr yanina ramirez oh my gosh to rediscover the secrets of the ancients and to try to match their skills as for me i'm valdemar and my job is to keep tabs on them yanina has brought shawn to the wallis collection in london it's a museum filled with famous paintings but that's not what she wants to show him sean great to be in the wallace collection fantastic place well known for its 18th century painting but look at all these glorious curiosities ivory ceramics ceramics and i mean look at that that's incredible as a piece of ceramic isn't that fantastic isn't it so it's a policy um french uh 16th century possibly but late yeah if it's not by him it's by someone following after him because he was hugely influential yeah he was he had a lot of followers yes and a lot of copiers bernard palisi was a maker of french renaissance pottery his plates covered in realistic animals vegetation and snakes are some of the most extraordinary ever made it's definitely a life mold a life mould so how would that happen then you have to kill the poor beast first of all and set it in a clay base and then take a plaster mold of it make some plaster of paris pour it over it and then take the dead snake out and replace the snake with clay slip well it's a bit gruesome isn't it yeah same with the fish i think the fish is alive casting the lizard really and that's why they look so realistic yes but it's like a little study in nature isn't it leaves individual leaves and i'm taking with that frog up there look yeah beautiful isn't it raising its head up yeah our absolute kind of little miniature well doesn't it yes how long do you think something like that would take to make uh probably about a week maybe a week ceramics are pretty quick to make yeah once you've got the molds the molds would probably take a week and then the making of the object about a week there's only two fire rings in it you could do this in a week yes easily yes easily right okay challenge i want to see what it is in a week right you're all better get busy yeah [Music] if he's going to make a policy in a week sean needs to get cracking so the next day in bolton he's up at dawn sketching out his first ideas i've been thinking about the design for it and i've come up with this so initially it's a stream running around an island basically and then i brought brim around the edge with the animals and creatures upon it there'll be a grass snake center stage a main snake a small grass snake here a few small common frogs delted about and two european green lizards i'll just draw them in faintly first so i get the proportions right so i don't have to use the rubber on them don't draw the legs people always get their legs the wrong way around on reptiles i'll get the tail in long curving tail [Music] i'm going to put a frog in here being eaten by the snake so we'll put him and put him in here just a small frog lunge for the uh the grass snake possibly i think that's i know i was going to put two fish in now [Music] a roach in first here so we get a bit of movement around the plate that we've got with the lizards and the fronts [Music] i think that's about it [Music] having planned his plate sean sets off to find out what police's beasties really look like he's come to a local nature reserve the rixton clay pits in the hope of spotting some reptiles hi mike hi sean how you doing okay well i believe you want to see some lizards and newts yes please lead on okay follow me someone might have any grass snakes here uh no actually no we don't it's quite surprising that the habitat's perfect for it when we were kids or loads of them wasn't about they seem to have died away yeah yeah the thing is i'm the reason i'm making a copy of a bernard policy plate the french guy from the 16th century under the eighth time was the first some reptiles grass snakes and stuff because he featured all these kind of things on them he actually killed the actual creatures took plaster molds of their bodies and then cast them and put them on these ceramics so that's why i'm here to have a look at stuff but i believe you've got a lot of news here haven't you yeah we do a good place for you yeah richard clay pieces uh is one of the top sites in the country for the uh protected great christie mute excellent looking forward to seeing them i hope we can find some fighters you know old you never know with nature here you can no you don't choreograph it yeah sorry it's the name of a game now he's just being patient yes if something swims by yeah we'll walk further up see if we can see it okay didn't have this trouble in his time no i expected a lot of friends yeah back in the 1500s shame you're not doing dams of flies isn't it yeah today yeah back in oxford dr yanina ramirez has been in the library investigating the man who made the animal pots bernard palisi was probably born around 1510 and he spent most of his life in and around france particularly around paris and the story goes that when he was a boy he saw a piece of porcelain and this porcelain just fascinated him police he was so obsessed with creating beautiful porcelain that he actually drove his family into poverty there's a story that he broke up the furniture pulled up the floorboards in his house so that he could fire his kiln and continue his experiments eventually he was recognized for what he'd developed which was a different form of pottery known as palisiware and usually the ones that survive are platters and on the surface are creatures that are made from life casts it seems well death casts creatures like snakes lizards that he has molded from them and and he was also fascinated by the sciences he was one of the first people to have realized that fossils were in fact dead creatures from the past he thought they were the result of the biblical flood what's also fascinating is that he was a huguenot a protestant in catholic france and his religious beliefs i think had a profound effect on the artworks that he's left behind because on the one hand as a protestant he's not creating the sorts of religious iconography that would usually see at this time so he's not making images of the madonna and the saints instead he's creating beautiful visualizations of god's creation but there's also something dark and prophetic about the works because there's a sense in which if you imagine these platters laden with fruit with food as you worked your way through all the glorious delicious flavors at the bottom will be this reminder of the earthly nature of of our existence and actually it's the darker creatures the snakes the lizards the spiders all those creatures that in arts are traditionally associated with the negative and indeed even the the hellish the devil they remind you that there is another aspect to existence it's almost like a memento mori watch your behavior watch your soul with the countryside in lancashire supplying so little in the way of real wildlife sean has come to the bolton museum in the hope of sourcing some alternatives well this is the place bolton museum i haven't been here for a while a bit of trepidation a bit of fear and nerves of jangling of it so here we go i think he's anxious because an egyptian statue from his forgery days was acquired by the museum and is now on show as a fake but with those days behind him he pops into the natural history section and then into the museum shop where he cleans them out of rubber snakes the next day yanina arrives in bolton to check on shawn's progress he said he could make a policy in a week so how's he doing [Music] yeah nice to see you again yeah back in oh my goodness so this is what you've been working on the walls collection this is kind of what i've come up with oh you've done so well this looks amazing and it's very similar to the one we saw in the wallace isn't it where the snake was on a sort of a rock in the center yeah on the island with the water going around there a couple of fish a little pike yeah because we saw a pike didn't we was it a pork on the other side yes it wasn't and you've got the frogs in so seashells is it going to be this size approximately yes it may not turn out exactly like them but something like that okay and it's going to have that same motion as well i love that the idea they're swimming around yeah we feel the genuine palaces they always have everything going around so it kind of gives a sense of movement i suppose yeah yeah yeah well this is going to be beautiful very hard to do but beautiful can't wait to see it what i have to do now is go and find the clay oh okay guys i'm going to demonstrate how police would have dug his own clay because it wasn't commercially available this is just on a tiny scale so you can imagine these buckets as brick ponds i'll pick some raw clay for starters this is all plant debris and pebbles and stone so we'll dump that in there i think that's actually enough to be going on with for starters you see just in the bucket we'll get some water without slipping in that's that's the trick of it it's full of plant debris stuff that's fallen in over centuries and even millions of years stones and grit that will just blow up in the kiln if we use it directly so just get like we have to chop up the clay in the bottom of the and turn it into a slurry in effect rather than a large lump in water soup clay soup if you like to get my hands in on my face you can see all the debris in it all the bits of detroit is the plant you feel all the grit and the stones as you squeeze it through your hand there's thousands and thousands of them so you would never be able to separate it without using the water right now virtually turn it all into a fine slurry there's a few pieces in the bottom that they'll be drained away the trick is to agitate it bring all the detroit from the top and then leave it and let it settle for five minutes the top part will be skimmed with a net a fine mesh net you can see all the plant debris on the surface so that would be taken off more professionally than i'm doing at the moment and all the stones of the grip will go to the bottom then what we want is the stuff in the middle the actual plate slurry so gently we pour this slowly off the top making sure we leave all the detroit in the heavy stuff on the bottom of the grit to the stone this will be running through a sluice in a brick pond if you imagine it on a big scale [Music] all the rough stuff in the bottom all the grits in the stone you feel it's full of grit and stones you can hear it on the bottom of the tin i'll get rid of this i've just been at a clean pond the next pond along with about five pounds in total settling ponzi called them now you leave that for a while to settle so the finer debut will be going to the bottom now and after say an hour of settling you would open the slots and run it into the next pond which is like the next bucket gently so we don't disturb the detroit's off the bottom you do that five times so if you start it with five tons of clay you'd end up with one tonne of gold clay at the end of it roughly through five processes right that's a demonstration don't know if they get on with making enough clay to make the policy plate so it's back to work the next morning back in the workshop shaun is ready to start his plate okay i've got the rubber animals and now we're going to make the molds so we'll start with this one the first process is kind of back to school to make a an edging just to contain the plaster around the actual snake so we can take the mold for it so just bear with me while i get this sorted i should piss all them so we don't get any any leaks at the last minute i'm running around panicking right that's all i said it's ready for the plaster now okay okay so i have to mix the plaster it's always a messy process always best to use your hand you can kind of feel the consistency right we'll have to pour it now because it goes off rather rapidly the plaster of paris i've got all the lumps out of it just give it a tap to get most of it you can see the bubbles come to the surface now just getting the air out to it now you see i'll fill the mold now i think that's a pretty good guess right we'll leave these to set for a while now and flash off and get on with other jobs right see the mold is dry now so we'll strip it first of all take the clay away and get at it right now so it's a snake embedded in the plaster we'll have to kind of give that a bit of a bash there we are all right the snake's out now ready to go so the first thing to do is to roll up the clay now we've got to get press it in to get all the scale patterns and the detail so just plunk it into the front end here start to press that's more or less i think we've more or less got what we want there right now i've got some cat got here i'm going to trim this as a trimming wire so i'll put it down onto the plaster hold it as tightly as we can now we'll take this off i'm going to see the exact pattern of the snake right now got to get the snake out now watching the body snapping it's all a bit fiddly looks flexible enough but it's stiff enough and the head is always a difficult part usually but we'll see here he goes i've got in there and flip it over rather bristly there we have him there's some work to do under the jawline here there's a little work to do on his head to undercut it here and especially on this side it's a bit deep because his head's going to be propped up until he dries so it looks like he's on the hunt something like that having made the snake shawn fast forwards through all the other animals on the plate and by the end of the afternoon he's ready to put his palisi together right this is the actual plate for the policy the blank as we call it pre-made this and i've made all the bits of snakes the lizards and whatever to go on he starts by modeling the plate itself putting in the island and the rushing stream that surrounds it i've made all kinds of ceramics from all periods russian desk furniture from the russian constructivist like the early 20th century right back to chinese stuff with the island and the stream finished it's time to bring in the hungry snake and then the unfortunate fish underneath he's cut out the clay in the shape of the snake a policy trick that helps with the firing the lizards go on the rim [Music] and finally a little gang of frogs is scattered about the riverbank and the pretend palisi is ready for its first firing i just hope it doesn't explode in the kiln that's all i can do with it just just hold close the kiln lid no it's firing [Music] shawn's been at it for a couple of weeks now and with the firing done yanina comes up to bolton to check the results hey sean hi nina oh my gosh okay well this is it look at this oh you are clever this is beautiful i can't get over the detail look at the snake's face it looks so lifelike you've added another snake in as well just eating a progress while it's just the background sticking out of his mouth so i've got a little bit of amusement on it it's oh it's better than i could have imagined it's ready for glazing though so just paint the glazes on back in the kiln yeah and that'll be it so the glaze will seal them all in as well these are the test firings i did ah and what i am pleased with is the the large snake scale in the gray white patches on the back of his head and then the rest in gray darker to the tail lighter to the oh yeah that's going to come up beautifully so doesn't it well that's it isn't it you can see each individual scale that's absolutely amazing with the translucent glazes and the turquoise i'll show you that one this for the water again it's got depth in it it looks like water the way that the glaze has run into the ridges yes got water-like quality that's quite policy-like as well it is and it's very roughly hewn as well you see thumb prints and see the cut away in the background yeah which is all very brilliant i said very rustic yeah that's in his style so i've tried to imitate the styling you can listen it's not cracked rings like a bell that's half there's no no fractures anywhere within it so it's it's come out well i'm pleased with it actually i just can't wait to see it [Music] with just the glazing to do sean is now ready for his final push put the uh coloring oxides on just a policy wood and now i've got to seal it with a top coat of clear glaze [Music] it all looks rather slap dash and rough at the moment but once the glaze has colored and the color develops in the glazes you'll see that as it's meant to be that's what's difficult about pottery when you're painting with poultry you've kind of a better imagination you have with painting because the colors that you see being put onto the actual object and nothing like what they come out as absolutely completely transformed so it does take a bigger imagination to be a good potter than the vehicle painter i think the glaze i'm putting on are basically grown glass with other other additives to stop them shrinking and cracking the glaze it's uh this is an alkaline glaze actually policy would have viewed heavily leaded glazes but they're so toxic that i'm not prepared to use that i have used them in the past with fakes now because it's very important with the fact that it is what it is it has to be the materials but with this being a demonstration i'm using alkaline glazes which aren't toxic at all it's slightly less glassy and slightly less rich but you can hardly tell the difference [Music] that's a finished plate so i've got to put it into the kiln but it's glazed on the back so so it doesn't stick to the shelf i've got to prop it on these little stilts just made it to the same claim fired and just stand on and then they'll be broken off when we get out of the kiln later so standard practice so we'll get into the kilner take the stilts first and put them in place kill them up policy wouldn't have had a kiln like this he'd he'd have killed for a plate like this i should imagine good killing but get to work with what he had it's quite a crucial it is important they're just in the right spot so i'll have to fiddle about a little bit to get these this place i've made is a little bit rounder than policy policies were mainly a long oval but i've made this to fit the kiln and get the biggest size up to the kiln that i can possibly get so it's a little bit rounder than policies but it's all made in the same manner make sure it's quite secure i don't want it moving in the actual firing it's ready now it's well balanced so it's ready for putting on now shut the kiln and fire it the next time we see it it'll be transformed hopefully we'll get a good firing there we have it a few days later down in london in the wallis collection janina is waiting to see what's come out of shawn's kiln once the firing has worked its magic she knows it'll be different but how different really looking forward to seeing sean's version of a policy plate now he seemed to think he could do it in a week which i thought was being a little bit ambitious it's a complicated thing to make but just want to see how he's executed those animals how he's come up with the glazes really can't wait [Music] how has this one been to make ah the modelling was good but the glazing had a bit of trouble with it yeah the glazing was always going to be tricky wasn't it to try and get those combinations that's the color yeah but the modeling is fairly good i'm intrigued about how long it ended up taking you because there was talk of it being knocked up in a week well that would be possible if we're just making the one item but it took me about three weeks in the end three weeks yeah it's still very good yeah the only thing i'm not pleased with is the animals because they're fake animals so they're not quite as realistic but we didn't want to kill anything for just for a plane no animals harmed in the making of this place that's a good slogan can't wait to see it oh wow that is magnificent oh my goodness just zings i love the way you've done the water yeah that's more typical of polishing than we see here more turquoise copper turquoise glaze yeah and and how about the finish so what sort of processes did you have to do together it's an alkaline glaze whereas palettes use lead but very toxic you can't really use them today glaze yeah i can't get over the realism of the creatures that snake is fantastic i've got that little snake just eating her shoulders oh yeah i want to see the back as well oh yes so that was to help it with the firing yes it would have been too thick of being solid there so it would have probably cracked along that line anyway so if you cut that away yeah you see a little firing marks oh yes there's no fault ringing so you've got to pop them up and put your hand on them a bit sharp ah but that's what we were looking for in the originals as well isn't it evidence you don't see it on the victorian fakes because they used uh asbestos props just leave a little dusty surface but in terms of the colours i think you've got i mean that's a great collection and i love this turquoise for the world that's more typical of policy rather than the useless copper blue so yeah yeah slightly brighter palette all around isn't it absolutely yeah they do vary those dark ones very light ones well i think it's it's absolutely gorgeous and it's it's just so lovely to touch the textures are amazing sean it is absolutely gorgeous i love it but the trouble with this art business there's always more to do absolutely let's get on and do some more back to work [Music] no one seemed to notice me

Channel: Perspective

Views: 12,742

Rating: 4.970149 out of 5

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, bernard palissy, bernard palissy ceramics, bernard palissy documentary, pottery, pottery documentary, waldemar januszczak, waldemar januszczak documentary

Id: LLnmfoJ6J4w

Length: 28min 56sec (1736 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 26 2020