The fire of Palissy is still alive in his village
“Bernard Palissy, potter and scholar of the Renaissance”, “inventor of the rustic figulines of the King” was born in the hamlet of Saint-Avit in 1510”. While there is nothing to confirm this statement, several converging elements tend to corroborate it.
It is on this basis, and thanks to the ambition of volunteers to help local development through culture and tourism, that is organised in 1985 a pottery fair which very quickly becomes one of the most important in the South West France.
From the dynamics of this Fair was born the museum, dedicated to the most famous Capelain.
The municipal museum was inaugurated on 2nd July 1992.
Faithful to the inventive spirit of Palissy, an important scholar of the Renaissance, the municipality and the association Friends of the Museum, who are responsible for the animation of the museum, agree on two main themes:
- To present the life and the work of the man who gives his name to the museum
- To make the museum a living space devoted to contemporary ceramics
In 1995, the owner of Bernard Palissy’s “birth place” makes it available to the museum, which makes possible the organisation of exhibitions bringing together the most important contemporary ceramists.
Today the Bernard Palissy museum boasts one of the biggest public collections of contemporary ceramics in France, with more than 450 works.
