Shopping: France : From France, ‘One Beautiful Hunk of Clay’

GIEN, France — I don’t know much about ceramics, but the first time I saw a decorative faience plate from Gien, I knew what I liked.

It was lush with peonies, in unlikely but luminous and vivid shades of red, pink and yellow. Their leaves ranged from olive green to midnight blue to sky blue. A sinuous, Islamic-looking vine pattern, blue with red accents, wound around the rim, enclosed by concentric bands of blue and a more muted yellow. The colors had remarkable life to them; the leaves and flowers seemed both to seep into the plate and to spring forth from it.

This, I thought to myself, is one beautiful hunk of clay.

Gien is a handsome, rather somber-looking town on the banks of the Loire, roughly 40 miles downriver from Orleans and about 95 miles south of Paris. (It is not to be confused with Giens on the Mediterranean coast near Toulon.) Said to have been founded by Charlemagne, it is known for its elegant chateau, once the home of Anne de Beaujeu, eldest daughter of Louis XI, and for its fascinating, if sometimes unsettling, Musee International de la Chasse (International Hunting Museum), housed in the chateau.

But what has made Gien a legendary name in France and beyond--especially in fine restaurants and stylish home dining rooms--is the 173-year-old ceramics factory called La Faiencerie de Gien.

Gien is an easy day trip from Paris by train or car, and the Faiencerie welcomes visitors with a kind of mini-theme park of ceramics, offering fascinating tours of the factory itself, a small but impressive museum and a factory outlet shop selling a wide range of substantially discounted items bearing the celebrated Gien name.

Tours take visitors through the entire production process, much of which is now automated. ( Faience differs from ordinary porcelain, both in the composition of the basic material or paste and in the way it is fired. The process yields a famously brilliant and translucent glaze.)

About 10 of the more traditional patterns are still hand-painted, though, and there’s something almost medieval about one room, with high bright windows, in which women sit in rows at work tables, silently dabbing on bits of luminous color.

The museum is basically two rooms and an entrance hall jam-packed with pieces--everything from a dainty dolls’ tea set to large decorative spires and columns made for the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900.

Just outside the museum is a showroom displaying a full range of the factory’s current collection, including limited edition reproductions of museum treasures.

But it is the considerably larger, less glamorous shop behind this one that will be of interest to bargain hunters: Here, a spectacular assortment of discontinued items and seconds are sold at discounts of 30% or more off the original prices. (It’s hard to detect any flaws in these seconds.)

Virtually all the factory’s current production seems to be represented here in one form or another--from such classic designs as Oiseaux de Paradis (an elegant fantasy of birds and flowers) and Lorraine Filet Vert (a far simpler but no less attractive floral pattern based around a single dark pink tulip) to the angular contemporary Dorique or grape-leaf-patterned Feuillage.

Prices vary according to design, size and shape, but I saw plenty of 10-inch plates ranging from about $14 to $58, 12-inch plates from about $24 to $80, trays from about $35 to $88 and bowls and tureens for $88 to $135--all substantially lower than what unflawed merchandise would cost in a store, even in Gien itself.

The shop can arrange shipping, but this will add considerably to the cost, and may require payment of customs duties on the receiving end.

A better plan: Select a few unusual decorative pieces, pack them yourself at the shop’s large self-service wrapping station, then carry them back in your carry-on bags.

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GUIDEBOOK

Pottery in Gien

Faiencerie de Gien, Place de la Victoire, Gien, tel. 011-33-3867-0005. Museum open daily, 9 a.m. to noon and 2 to 6:15 p.m; admission about $3.50. Discount shop open Monday through Saturday, 9 to 11:30 a.m. and 2 to 5:30 p.m. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Showroom open upon request during regular shop hours. Tours are available in French and English by appointment only (call the above numbers; English is understood), Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to noon and 2 to 6 p.m. The free tour takes about an hour.