Nathalie Pierlot
Born in Paris in 1951, the same year that potters Jeanne and Norbert Pierlot settled at Château de Ratilly in the Yonne region. She spent her entire childhood there, learning pottery with her parents and various potters who came to teach during introductory summer ceramics courses. After graduating in Paris in 1972 with a Bachelor's degree in psychology, she began a Master's degree in manual art therapy, while at the same time setting up a self-expression workshop with friends. Deciding to devote herself entirely to pottery, she returned to Puisaye in 1977 and set up her own workshop at Le Colombier, while also helping to run the Ratilly workshop and summer courses.
In 1988, she took over the Grès de Ratilly company. With the help of two journeymen, she continued production of the models created by her parents Jeanne and Norbert Pierlot (white stoneware dinner services), and introduced new colors.
At the same time, she pursues her own research into shapes and materials: unique pieces in turned stoneware, fired with wood or gas in reduction at 1280°C. She mainly uses local ash and earth glazes. Some pieces are decorated with signs, superimposed glazes or oxides.
Nathalie, the eldest daughter of our potters, is the pride of our home, where she keeps the flame alive better than anyone. Relying on a very sure technique that she has practiced since childhood, she in turn masters all the virtues of earth and fire. The ancestry is present, the epiphany of simplicity and essential forms obvious, but what moves me beyond filiation is to detect what belongs to her in her own right and which she succeeds admirably in translating: by courageously taking the risk of confronting tutelary figures, she proposes a personal language that does not betray them but accompanies them, even renews them in the heart of stoneware. Matter of tobacco, chestnuts, stony shadows or bursts of spring flowers, everything is a living reminder of our native Puisaye, which flows by the clay woods, now resonating in the course of oblong shapes, reeds or beeches, darting forward without faltering, firm and vulnerable, all at once, by the sensibility that emerges and is born from the raw earth under the seal of a ring. The Poyaudin country as a new Orient in the rounded belly of a pot dressed in signs. Nathalie cries out softly, secretly, both her belonging and her uniqueness. A bird in the night, but with eyes wide open. Martin Pierlot. Ratilly, July 2010
Public and private collections
- Museum of Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye, Nièvre.
- Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Villiers-Saint-Benoît, Yonne
Solo exhibitions at the gallery
Nadia Pasquer - Nathalie Pierlot
Artists from Galerie focus Nathalie Pierlot
Main recent exhibitions
2023
"Artistes de la galerie" with Nadia Pasquer, Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste, Toucy
2022
"25 years of the Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste", Maison du Chanoine, Treigny
2017
"Céramistes contemporains de Puisaye", with Robert Deblander and Alistair Danhieux, Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste, Toucy
2016
"Artistes de la galerie", group show, Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste, Toucy
2013
"Artists in the gallery, Focus on Nathalie Pierlot", Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste, Toucy
2011
"Regard sur la céramique contemporaine", Galerie Libre-Choix with Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste, Brussels, Belgium.
2010
Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste, Toucy, with Hervé Rousseau
2009
Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste, Toucy, with Pascal Geoffroy
2008
Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste, Toucy, with Simone Perrotte
Cellier de l'Abbaye, Tournus
2007
Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste, Toucy, "Les dix ans de la Galerie", with Gisèle Buthod-Garçon and Hervé Rousseau.
2006
Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye Castle
2005
Le Lavoir, Clamart (92)
