Quimpèr ceramic fruit bowl, hand painted with crocuses 1970-1980

A beautiful colorful ceramic fruit bowl from Quimper, hand painted with crocuses 1970 – 1980. Each piece of Quimper faience is completely handmade and painstakingly hand-painted. Each piece of Quimper is unique. One artist handpaints each piece from start to finish. And how lucky that we were also able to score a matching cheese plate and domel! (see the last two photos and look at the other items to order this as well). With these two, serving a cheese platter with grapes becomes a real party! The board is marked:  HB Quimper France –  RL F.715 D.177

Dimensions: 15 cm high, 24.5 cm wide

The tin-glazed handpainted French faience known as Quimper Pottery, pronounced “cam-pair” has been manufactured  in Quimper, a town in Brittany, France, for over 300 years. The pottery adopted its name from the town of Quimper where potter Jean Baptiste Bousquet built his kilns in the Quimper area of Locmaria in 1685 and was given a royal manufacturing license by King Louis XIV. Although the area of Locmaria in Quimper has been associated with pottery as far back as the Gallo-Roman era, Bousquet is credited with being the founder of “Quimper Pottery”. His firm was known as HB Quimper.

In 1772, a rival firm was founded by Francoise Eloury known as Porquier. A third firm formed in 1778 by Guillaume Dumaine which was known as HR or Henriot Quimper. The pottery made by the three companies was similar featuring the Breton peasants and sea and flower motifs.

In 1913, Porquier and Henriot merged with HB joining the others in 1968. The company was sold to a US family in 1984. More changes followed and in 2011 Jean Pierre Le Goff purchased the company and changed the name to Henriot