Gourd of Nevers

November's "Object of the Month" is devoted to the restoration of an earthenware gourd from Nevers, an important production centre in Northern France in the 17th and 18th centuries. This earthenware is characterised by its so-called "grand feu" decorations (a single high-temperature firing to fix the glaze and the colours at the same time), which are first treated in cameos of blues, then in polychromy (blue, yellow, yellow-orange and brown).

A restoration campaign of the gourd, launched in 2007, allowed to recover the characteristics of this production by eliminating the traces of a previous repairing intervention which prevented a good reading of the piece...