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Key figures

Origin and history

The departmental museum of faience and table arts, located in Samadet in the Landes, is dedicated to ceramics and the history of the Royal Manufacture of faience founded in 1732. This industrial site, created on the initiative of Abbé Charles Maurice du Bouzet de Roquepine, Baron de Samadet, has enjoyed a royal monopoly to produce earthenware for almost a century. Local resources, such as forest timber, clay and mares, have allowed for abundant production, exported to Gers, Béarn, and even the West Indies.

The factory experienced a golden age in the 18th century thanks to talented artisans, including Le Pâtissier, a specialist from Bordeaux. Its faiences, recognizable by their thick white enamel and polychrome decorations (mauve, blue, yellow, green), often represented floral motifs, animals or rural scenes. Despite its success, competition from English porcelain and earthenware, as well as high production costs, has precipitated its decline. The factory closed permanently in 1840, after marking the artisanal history of the region.

The museum, created in 1968 by the Committee of the Faiencery and given to the Landes department in 1998, presents more than 200 pieces from the Samadet ovens. He also explores manufacturing techniques, artistic influences and the evolution of table arts from the Middle Ages to the present. A model of the manufacture and comparisons with other French factories (Bordeaux, Rouen, Moustiers) underline the originality of local productions. The museum also offers manufacturing demonstrations and exhibitions on contemporary ceramics.

In addition, tables, sound interviews by historians and films evoke culinary history, from the appearance of individual cutlery to "French" and "Russian" services. The contemporary ceramic house, managed by the community of municipalities of Tursan, enriches the offer with exhibitions and animations on the arts of fire. This place, labeled "Musée de France", thus perpetuates the memory of an exceptional artisanal know-how.

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