19th Century French Picassiette Water Jug

Lovely example of a 19th Century French picassiette pottery water jug.

Piqueassiette or trencadis is a style of mosaic that incorporates ceramic shards, broken dishes and other found objects into a design. While traditional mosaics used small cubes that were relatively uniformly shaped, piqueassiette or trencadis tends to use nonuniform pieces. The term piqueassiette has a French origin. Some say it translates to “stolen plate” or “broken plate”. It also refers to someone who is a “scrounger” which of course fits because most piqueassiette art is created with recycled or scavenged materials. Trencadis is a Catalan term that means “chopped” or “breakable”. There is a long tradition of using broken and discarded materials to create folk art.