The tiles seen here were cast from real seashells, dead insects, and leaves. This process of “casting from life” was fi rst perfected by French potter Bernard Palissy in the late 1500s. He sometimes pressed objects right into the clay. Other times he made a plaster mold around the specimen, filled it with clay, and then attached the resulting three-dimensional cast animal to a tile or dish. Part of the allure of these strange objects was that they brought nature’s creatures directly into the home.