Jacqueline Lerat (1920–2009) was a major French ceramist of the twentieth century, closely associated with the revival of stoneware in La Borne and later in Bourges. Initially trained in drawing and the decorative arts, she discovered ceramics in the early 1940s before settling in La Borne in 1943, a decisive moment in her career. There, she met Jean Lerat, whom she married in 1945, and with whom she shared a studio while developing a deeply personal body of work.

Although the couple occasionally signed certain works with a shared monogram, Jacqueline Lerat quickly asserted her own artistic language. Her work moved beyond traditional pottery toward a more sculptural approach to ceramics, often in stoneware, with organic, vegetal, and anthropomorphic forms. Her pieces convey a singular inner presence, at once dense, restrained, and spiritual, making her one of the leading figures of postwar French ceramics.

From 1966 onward, she taught ceramics at the École nationale des beaux-arts in Bourges while continuing her own demanding artistic research. Her work has been the subject of important exhibitions and is now held in major public collections, reflecting the essential place she occupies in the history of modern French ceramics.