A French Nevers 'Bleu Persan' ewer with pewter cover, c. 1700.

Property of a private Swedish collector.

The city of Nevers, Nièvre, now in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in central France, was a centre for manufacturing faience, or tin-glazed earthenware pottery, between around 1580 and the early 19th century. Production of Nevers faience then gradually died down to a single factory, before a revival in the 1880s.

Nevers adopted Chinese vase shapes early in the 17th century, earlier than Dutch Delftware.[38] Some Nevers pieces clearly copy Chinese export porcelain in terms of their painted decoration, both the cheaper Kraak ware and better quality blue and white wares, whereas others have decoration based on Turkish, Persian or other Islamic Middle Eastern styles. These often have the blue background, which is unusual on Chinese export porcelain, where blue figures on a white ground are the norm in blue and white wares.