Lunéville Faience

Lunéville faience, tin-glazed earthenware, faience fine, and a kind of unglazed faience fine produced from 1723 at Lunéville, France. The first factory, established by Jacques Chambrette, became the Manufacture Royale du Roi de Pologne (“Royal Factory of the King of Poland”) in 1749, when the exiled king Stanisław I (Louis XV’s father-in-law) became duke of Lorraine and settled in the town.

Early Lunéville faience is painted in underglaze colours—either polychrome or blue monochrome (camaïeu). Its decoration resembles that of Japanese wares and Rouen faience. Later Lunéville faience is painted in overglaze colours—in polychrome or green camaïeu—and is reminiscent of Strasbourg faience. But the Chinese figures on Lunéville are “Chinois distingués” (“refined Chinese gentlemen”), while on Strasbourg they are simple folk such as fishermen. Lunéville produced large faience dogs and lions that were used as garden ornaments.

From about 1755, Paul-Louis Cyfflé modeled figures in a body called terre de pipe (sometimes called terre-de-Lorraine), a soft white earthenware that is a kind of unglazed faience fine with a superficial resemblance to biscuit, or unglazed, porcelain. The Lunéville factory also made faience fine, some of which is in the Rococo style.