Aptware

You have to go back to ancient China to find the first mixed and marbled clays, in the Tang dynasty. Several centuries later, Mixed Clays reappeared in England with Josiah Wedgwood 1730/1795), and it seems likely that is reappeared several years later in Apt as well as other French and European centres, but often abandoned due to the long and tedious preparatory work needed.

Over time, the technique of Mixed clays formed the identity of the faience in Apt, a region of precious local clays with differing contrasting colours. The faience-makers brought together multi-coloured clays, natural or dyed with pigments contained in the ochre of the region. This famous mixture, very finely mixed and kneaded, makes up a design throughout the thickness of the product, thus giving the veins of the marble their mineral aspect.

In the 18th century, les Moulins were the precursors of the fine faience of the Apt and Le Castelet area. Alliances with other famous names in the region, such as the Fouques, a family of faience-makers from Moustiers took them with the Arnoux to Valentine, then to England.

For nearly 3 centuries several generations of talented faience makers succeeded one another at Apt, giving rise to original, refined faience, their creations renewing this traditional skill.

So they would make a name for the fine Apt faience, which is a ceramic reputed for the natural quality of its clays with kaolinite properties that enable the production of pieces with high resistance, a remarkable finesse and fine sonority.

Later, faience-makers refined this noble substance with specific, magnificent decoration, which embellished the faience – first of all under the influence of the Regency and Louis XV as the faience-makers wanted, then in the style of Louis XVI and the Directory.
Years later, with more simplicity and purity of line, Apt faience adopted a plainer style during the 19th century with purer, more rustic curves with decoration of flowers or fruit.

More recently, the Bernard/Faucon dynasty stretched from the 18th century to the beginning of the 21st century. We will quote Joseph Bernard, known for his mastery of his pit-firing at Apt (using a new mixture of clays), who founded the Royal Ceramics Academy in Morocco in 1968 at the request of King Hassan II. In Apt, his grandson Jean Faucon carried on the work and created the Marbré d’Apt Bleu (Marbled Blue from Apt), introducing modern innovation, and restoring to Apt and Le Castelet faience their reputation for excellence.

The record of the clay is there to remind us that it is largely to these 8 generations of faience-makers in the Bernard/Faucon Family that we owe the continued existence of faience at Apt.