Pair of 19th Century Picassiette Plates

Pair of 19th Century colourful French decorative pic assiette dish/plates. 

To the centre of the plate is a milkmaid and to the dish a cow. Pique assiette 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, pique assiette or trencadis tends to use nonuniform pieces. The term pique assiette 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 pique assiette 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. 

Dimensions: Plate 3cm h x 23.5cm diam / Dish 4.5cm h x 24cm diam