The aim of my public denial of August 18, 2023 was to re-establish the truth about this profession that I practice in the village of La Chapelle-des-Pots, and to put an end to the rumors and false publications which claim that there would no longer be production of pottery, ceramics, earthenware, ... in this village, which a certain number of people do for I don't know what reasons¹.

As the headline in the Sud Ouest newspaper reads, I protest against all the people who claim that there is no longer any pottery made in La Chapelle-des-Pots and thus make me disappear from the village.

The newspaper Sud Ouest was interested in my denial and gave it media coverage by demonstrating that there is still pottery production currently in La Chapelle-des-Pots where I work, certainly different in style from the past but these are always clays, glazed or not, which are fired in my potter's kilns in this village.

Due to an obvious lack of space, the newspaper was unable to develop certain aspects of the subject.

In addition to the example cited by Sud Ouest on the first version of the village's Terra Aventura circuit there was also written "... the last potter in the village... before he died out... it was in 1864" thereby sidelining all the potters of the 20th and 21st century. Following my complaint to the Mayor of La Chapelle-des-Pots, these two so-called " fiction " with historical truth passages were corrected in 2020.

The reception manager of the Saintes Tourist Office wrote to me on August 17, 2020:
 "....For our part, we apologize for our erroneous speech and understand that it may have been prejudicial.
 In the future, we will not forget to promote your business...
 We thank you for the information provided below relating to the history of this activity which we hope will continue for a very long time, thanks in particular to you.
 Please accept, Sir, our best regards."

Recurrence since 2022 at least, the Saintes Tourist Office, without giving the reason, publicly affirmed to Internet users around the world in the page it publishes and archived on web.archive.org ( cf. my first denial), that "La Chapelle-des-Pots, village of potters... the village has lost its former functions, on the other hand, it retains the traces of the old workshops..." while I have, still on the main street, my boutique workshop created in 1954 by my grandfather in which I sell my pottery, ceramics, etc.

To make believe that my profession was "lost" in this village and by corollary that I do not exist is unacceptable and must be publicly denied, especially when this comes from a Tourist Office which is financed to promote the territories and the activities found there and not to obscure them, in particular by claiming them to be lost, for example. How many tourists and locals have been dissuaded from coming to see potters in La Chapelle-des-Pots since there are no longer any potters "in the potter's village" according to these untruths?
I had warned an elected official in my village of this publication and on June 19, 2023, he informed me that the Tourist Office would modify its text, without knowing when. Curiously, the publication of the Saintes Tourist Office has been slightly modified since my denial of August 18, 2023, only at the end of the summer tourist season, without telling me or apologizing this time, unlike in 2020, for the obvious harm these fake news cause me.

The only few lines on the website of the Saintes Tourist Office which speak of the Chapelle-des-Pots as Sud Ouest points out also cast doubt on the village origin of the ceramics found during archaeological excavations because "“...some ''would have'' been found in Canada and even in Louisiana... " whereas they ''were'' found as proven by various publications².

The village's 2001 annual municipal bulletin reports p32-33 the conference on Saintonge ceramics by Jean Chapelot, Director of Research at the CNRS. Jean Chapelot indicates that in the Middle Ages these ceramics were produced in around twenty known places, mainly spread over 4 neighboring communes near NE of Saintes, of which in the 13th century La Chapelle-des-Pots was the main center. Jean Chapelot specifies: Mostly "utilitarian terracotta ceramics, unglazed", some were however already "high quality green and brown with painted decoration". "In the Middle Ages, the dynamism of production was unparalleled in Europe. [In 2001], throughout Europe, there were 250 places where Saintonge ceramics were found" , including from Chapelle-des-Pots, without forgetting those produced in the following centuries of which "we find them in large quantities in North America".
In 1868 Louis Audiat³ explains that " the numerous clay workers caused the place to be nicknamed La Chapelle-des-Potiers (The potter’s chapel), as indicated by the pouillé d'Alliot in 1648, and by abbreviation the Chapel of Pots. ". A time when the word ceramist seems to be very little used according to the French textual corpus studied by Google⁴. Louis Audiat specifies that La Chapelle-des-Pots once had "around forty active kilns"².

La Chapelle-des-pots already has a rich ceramic past which does not stop in the 19th century. The reputation of this village of potters since the 13th century where Bernard Palissy, glassmaker, potter, enameler, painter, writer, and scientist, came to work in the 16th century, was subsequently perpetuated by the production of pottery and ceramics from the 20th and 21st century, however some deny the evidence, or even “erase” it. This becomes more than a “lack of consideration” as the subtitle Sud Ouest.

The village's recent pottery activity has necessarily decreased, but in volume, due to the closure in 2012 of the pottery SME founded around 1960 by Jean Alexiu. She had had several dozen employees and many machines that could produce more than an individual ceramist, as my grandfather and I did now.

In 1996 Jean Alexiu said "At La Chapelle-des-Pots we are fortunate to be custodians of an extraordinary continuity" or even "the activity of the potters, here, is not "is in fact almost never interrupted... This is a unique case in Poitou-Charentes" (Picotin Richard, "Pot de terre, pot de fer", Journal Sud Ouest ed. Saintes, February 7 1996 p18B). The journalist reports that the perpetuity of this tradition which gave the name to the village is ensured in the 20th century by the two potters: my grandfather René Renaud (†1991), independent ceramist potter, and Jean Alexiu (†2011) with his thirty employees.

But Jean Alexiu also complained in this article that he faced obstacles preventing him from signaling on the roads at his own expense, his pottery but also the village renowned for its ceramic manufacturing for 8 centuries, while companies that he cited as an example had their authorized road signs.

This tradition of pottery at La Chapelle-des-Pots led the Secretary of State for Tourism to select, with 9 other national sites, La Chapelle-des-Pots in 2003 as part of a mission entitled “tourism, a tool for rural revitalization and sustainable development ", which had given "a boost" to the Pôle de la Céramique project whose aim was “to develop a sector of economic and tourist activities around the theme of ceramics” with “… a certain community interest since it affects the identity of the territory. » . Project “received very favorably” by the Community Council Office in May 2003 (Annual Municipal Bulletin 2003 La Chapelle-des-Pots p17-18).

But in 2006 the Community of Communes refused its funding promised to the Pôle de la Céramique during the vote of September 28, 2006 (2006 annual municipal bulletin of the village p13-14). The municipality has nevertheless continuied its project by readapting it according to its means, as in 2011 with the listing of the potter's kiln known as Varoqueaux⁵ as a Historic Monument.

Although the Musée de la Céramique Saintongeaise was ideally located in La Chapelle-des-Pots given its history and it was to be expanded as part of the Pôle de la Ceramique project, it was closed in 2014 after the municipal elections. of 2014 and the 17th, and last, pottery market in La Chapelle-des-Pots where several dozen potters came from all over France.

Dorian Gallais points out in his article in Sud Ouest that “on the commune website [my] workshop is well referenced but there is no mention of this local know-how, which is several centuries old.". This site, redesigned in 2022, indicates in the video section a short video report from France 3 on the village where I was interviewed in 2016 but it has not included the old little history of the village⁶. Local know-how proven since the 13th century for La Chapelle-des-Pots⁷ and perpetuated in the 21st.

While in other places synergies exist to highlight and develop their local cultural and historical identity internationally, to my knowledge nothing is being done in this territory of Saintongeais potters.
Worse, for some time now and against the evidence people have claimed that there are no more potters, ceramists in La Chapelle-des-Pots while denying their existence for obscure reasons .

So before the end of the high summer season 2023 I posted my public denial of August 18, 2023 to counter these false comments, which have lasted too long, publicly denying the existence of any pottery activities in progress by affirming them by example disappeared in the village even though I have my workshop and my shop there!

The stereotyped image of the old potter spending his days throwing pots or other containers is outdated these days. This profession cannot be reduced to the manufacture of household utensils⁸, the only limits being the physical constraints of the material.

The potters, previously an important corporation, currently craftsmen for les Chambres de Métiers et de l'Artisanat, are also an industry as represented by the faience factory Alexiu, a science as represented by Bernard Palissy seeking white enamel, a technology as demonstrated for its time by the Varoqueaux kiln and its firing system, but also by the shapes, colors, textures, original, eccentric, ... a whole art for centuries.

Whether or not other potters want to settle in La Chapelle-des-Pots in the future, the reality is that I work here and produce my various pottery, ceramics, earthenware, ... in my workshop created there is almost 70 years old by my grandfather, and that these facts cannot be denied.

Kim RENAUD ceramist, potter, potter, painter at the ATELIER RENÉ RENAUD, 36 rue de la République 17100 LA CHAPELLE DES POTS. www.atelier-rene-renaud.fr

Note 1 for example:
FRANCK VIGIER, 2018. Présentation de l’histoire de la commune par Muriel Perrin [online]. Video. April 27, 2018. Available at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7CcNfJqDh8 [accessed August 15, 2023]
LA COLLEGIA, 2022. DANIEL PIRON - BONUS INTERVIEW [online]. Video. November 23, 2022. Available at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_jmvXzsTn4[accessed August 26, 2023]
2022. Les villages de Saintonge à visiter - Saintes Tourisme. Saintes. [online]. March 21, 2022. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20220523180306/https://www.saintes-tourisme.fr/tour-dhorizon-des-villages-de-saintonge/[accessed on August 26, 2023]

Note 2 see publications https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index .php/MCR/article/view/17149/22852 or www.archeolab.quebec/recherche/resultats?&lieu=Europe+%3E+France+%3E+Saintonge+%3E+La+Chapelle-des-Pots Or the archaeological excavation of the shipwreck of La Belle off the coast of Texas in 1686. https://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/ belle/images/art-ceramics.html.
In the Museun of London, 3 Saintonge ceramics from the 13th to the 16th century are exhibited out of the 6 referenced in their online catalog (https://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/search/#!/results?terms=saintonge).

Note 3 p325 from Audiat Louis, 1868, Bernard Palissy : étude sur sa vie et ses travaux. Libraire Académique Didier et Cie, Paris. 522p.

Note 4 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ceramiste&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=fr-2019&smoothing=0

Note 5 https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/merimee/PA17000086

Note 6 archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20160708204235/http://lachapelle-des-pots.fr/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=37&mnuid=19&tconfig=0

Note 7 Know-how of perhaps 2000 years if we include the Gallo-Roman potters of Saintes where several kilns were discovered in Saintes, the distance from Arc de Germanicus to La Chapelle-des-Pots is approximately 7 km . It would be strange if these Gallo-Romans who built the aqueducts of Saintes, thermal baths, amphitheater, maintained roads, did not also come to what would become La Chapelle-des-Pots several centuries later, but they did not left traces of activities to my knowledge in the commune, or they have been destroyed over the past twenty centuries
Local know-how can be around 5 millennia if we include the Artenacian ceramics (final Neolithic -3100 to -2400 BC) discovered in Diconche, 8.5 km from La Chapelle-des- Pots during the construction of the Saintes ring road (p205, 206 volume 1 https://www.prehistoire.org/shop_515-39735 -0-0/m25pdf-1999-the-neolithic-enclosures-of-diconche-in-saintes-charente-maritime-a-periodization-of-artenac-claude-burnez-et-pierrick-fouere-dir.. html)

Note 8 the firing of clays by potters and ceramists since the Neolithic cannot be reduced to household utensils. It is also tiles, bricks, roof tiles, pipes, ducts, conduits, votive objects, statuary, decorative and art objects, …. It is also “invisible” but essential components of the automotive industries (spark plugs, brakes, etc.), aerospace, electronics, electrical, medical (dental, bone prostheses, etc.), ceramic, glass, cement, metallurgical industries, ... with their ovens, and many other areas, wherever electrical insulation properties, resistance to corrosion, wear, temperature, etc. are sought. Fired clay objects constantly perfected since the Neolithic era by potters and ceramists, for various uses.