Tin-glazed pottery - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Tin-glazed pottery is a majolica

Majolica

Majolica, an English version of the Italian word maiolica, is a term covering a wide variety of European tin-glazed pottery, typically brightly painted over an opaque white background glaze, with an earthenware body....

pottery

Pottery

Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery also refers to the art or craft of the potter or the manufacture of pottery...

covered in glaze

Ceramic glaze

Glaze is a layer or coating of a vitreous substance which has been fired to fuse to a ceramic object to color, decorate, strengthen or waterproof it.-Use:...

containing tin oxide

Tin oxide

Tin oxide may refer to:* Tin oxide , SnO* Tin dioxide , SnO2...

which is white, shiny and opaque. (See tin-glazing

Tin-glazing

Tin-glazing is the process of giving ceramic items a tin-based glaze which is white, glossy and opaque, normally applied to red or buff earthenware. The opacity and whiteness of tin glaze make it valued by its ability to decorate with colour....

.) The pottery body is usually made of red or buff colored earthenware

Earthenware

Earthenware is a common ceramic material, which is used extensively for pottery tableware and decorative objects.-Types of earthenware:Although body formulations vary between countries and even between individual makers, a generic composition is 25% ball clay, 28% kaolin, 32% quartz, and 15%...

and the white glaze was often used to imitate Chinese porcelain

Chinese porcelain

Chinese ceramic ware shows a continuous development since the pre-dynastic periods, and is one of the most significant forms of Chinese art. China is richly endowed with the raw materials needed for making ceramics. The first types of ceramics were made during the Palaeolithic era...

. Tin-glazed pottery is usually decorated, the decoration applied to the unfired glaze surface by brush as metallic oxides, commonly cobalt oxide

Cobalt oxide

Cobalt oxide may refer to*Cobalt oxide - CoO*Cobalt oxide - Co2O3*Cobalt oxide - Co3O4...

, copper oxide

Copper oxide

Copper oxide is a compound from the two elements copper and oxygen.Copper oxide may refer to:*Copper oxide , a red powder;*Copper oxide , a black powder...

, iron oxide

Iron oxide

Iron oxides are chemical compounds composed of iron and oxygen. All together, there are sixteen known iron oxides and oxyhydroxides.Iron oxides and oxide-hydroxides are widespread in nature, play an important role in many geological and biological processes, and are widely utilized by humans, e.g.,...

, manganese dioxide and antimony

Antimony

Antimony is a toxic chemical element with the symbol Sb and an atomic number of 51. A lustrous grey metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite...

oxide. The makers of Italian tin-glazed pottery from the late Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

blended oxides to produce detailed and realistic polychrome paintings.

The earliest tin-glazed pottery appears to have been made in Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

in the 9th century, the oldest fragments having been excavated during the First World War from the palace of Samarra

Samarra

Sāmarrā is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Salah ad-Din Governorate, north of Baghdad and, in 2003, had an estimated population of 348,700....

about fifty miles north of Baghdad. From there it spread to Egypt, Persia and Spain before reaching Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

in the Renaissance

Renaissance

, Holland in the 16th century and England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

and other European countries shortly after.

The development of white, or near white, firing bodies in Europe from the late 18th century, such as Creamware

Creamware

Creamware is a cream-coloured, refined earthenware created about 1750 by the potters of Staffordshire, England, which proved ideal for domestic ware. It was popular until the 1840s. It was also known as tortoiseshellware or Prattware depending on the colour of glaze used...

by Josiah Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood was an English potter, founder of the Wedgwood company, credited with the industrialization of the manufacture of pottery. A prominent abolitionist, Wedgwood is remembered for his "Am I Not A Man And A Brother?" anti-slavery medallion. He was a member of the Darwin–Wedgwood family...

and porcelain, reduced the demand for Delftware, faience and majolica.

The rise in the cost of tin oxide during the First World War led to its partial substitution by zirconium

Zirconium

Zirconium is a chemical element with the symbol Zr and atomic number 40. The name of zirconium is taken from the mineral zircon. Its atomic mass is 91.224. It is a lustrous, grey-white, strong transition metal that resembles titanium...

compounds in the glaze.

Names

Tin-glazed pottery of different periods and styles is known by different names. The pottery from Muslim Spain is known as Hispano-Moresque ware. The decorated tin-glaze of Renaissance Italy is called maiolica
Maiolica
Maiolica is Italian tin-glazed pottery dating from the Renaissance. It is decorated in bright colours on a white background, frequently depicting historical and legendary scenes.-Name:...

, sometimes pronounced majolica by English speakers. When the technique was taken up in the Netherlands it became known as delftware
Delftware
Delftware, or Delft pottery, denotes blue and white pottery made in and around Delft in the Netherlands and the tin-glazed pottery made in the Netherlands from the 16th century....

as much of it was made in the town of Delft

Delft

Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam and The Hague....

. Dutch potters brought it to England in around 1600 and wares produced there are known as English delftware
English Delftware
English delftware is tin-glazed pottery made in the British Isles between about 1550 and the late 18th century. The main centres of production were London, Bristol and Liverpool with smaller centres at Wincanton, Glasgow and Dublin....

or galleyware. In France it was known as faience
Faience
Faience or faïence is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed pottery on a delicate pale buff earthenware body, originally associated with Faenza in northern Italy. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip...

.

The word maiolica is thought to have come from the medieval Italian word for Majorca, an island on the route for ships that brought Hispano-Moresque wares to Italy from Valencia in the 15th and 16th centuries, or from the Spanish obra de Mallequa, the term for lustered ware made in Valencia under the influence of Moorish craftsmen from Malaga. During the Renaissance, the term maiolica was adopted for Italian-made luster pottery

Lusterware

Lusterware or Lustreware is a type of pottery or porcelain with a metallic glaze that gives the effect of iridescence, produced by metallic oxides in an overglaze finish, which is given a second firing at a lower temperature in a "muffle kiln", reduction kiln, which excludes oxygen.The first use...

copying Spanish examples, and during the 16th century its meaning shifted to include all tin-glazed earthenware.

Because of their identical names, there has been some confusion between tin-glazed majolica/maiolica and the lead-glazed majolica made in England and America in the 19th century, but they are different in origin, technique, style and history. In the late 18th century, old Italian maiolica became popular among the British, who referred to it by the anglicized pronunciation majolica. The Minton pottery copied it and applied the term majolica ware to their product. At the Great Exhibition of 1851, Minton launched a colorful lead-glazed earthenware which they called Palissy ware
Palissy ware
"Palissy ware" is a nineteenth-century term for ceramics produced in the style of the famous French potter Bernard Palissy , who referred to his own work in the familiar manner as rustique...

. By the 1880s, the public was calling Palissy ware majolica, and the usage has stuck. "In the 1870s, the curators of the South Kensington Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...

returned to the original Italian 'maiolica' with an 'i' to describe all Italian tin-glazed earthenware, doubtless to stress the Italian pronunciation and to avoid confusion with contemporary majolica."

For the article about 19th century lead-glazed earthenware, see Victorian majolica
Victorian majolica
Victorian Majolica is earthenware pottery made in 19th century Britain, Europe and the USA with molded surfaces and colorful clear lead glazes.-History:...

W.B.Honey (Keeper of Ceramics at the Victoria & Albert Museum, 1938–1950), wrote of maiolica that, "By a convenient extension and limitation the name may be applied to all tin-glazed ware, of whatever nationality, made in the Italian tradition ... the name faïence (or the synonymous English 'delftware') being reserved for the later wares of the 17th Century onwards, either in original styles (as in the case of the French) or, more frequently, in the Dutch-Chinese (Delft) tradition." The term maiolica is sometimes applied to modern tin-glazed ware made by studio potters.

Hispano-Moresque Ware

Main article Hispano-Moresque ware.

The Moors

Moors

The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...

introduced tin-glazed pottery to Spain after the conquest of 711. Valencia

Valencia (city in Spain)

Valencia or València is the capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third largest city in Spain, with a population of 809,267 in 2010. It is the 15th-most populous municipality in the European Union...

and Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

became important centers of Hispano-Moresque ware and in the 14th century, Málaga

Málaga

Málaga is a city and a municipality in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, Spain. With a population of 568,507 in 2010, it is the second most populous city of Andalusia and the sixth largest in Spain. This is the southernmost large city in Europe...

became celebrated for its gold lusterware

Lusterware

.

Hispano-Moresque ware is generally distinguished from the pottery of Christendom by the Islamic character of its decoration, though as the dish illustrated shows, it was also made for the Christian market.

Hispano-Moresque shapes of the 15th century included the albarello

Albarello

An albarello is a type of maiolica earthenware jar, originally a medicinal jar designed to hold apothecaries' ointments and dry drugs. The development of this type of pharmacy jar had its roots in the Middle East during the time of the Islamic conquests....

(a tall jar), luster dishes with coats of arms

Coat of arms

A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...

, made for wealthy Italians and Spaniards, jugs, some on high feet (the citra and the grealet), a deep-sided dish (the lebrillo de alo) and the eared bowl (cuenco de oreja).

With the Spanish conquest of Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

, tin-glazed pottery came to be produced in the Valley of Mexico as early as 1540, at first in imitation of the ceramics imported from Seville

Seville

Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...

.

Although the Moors were expelled from Spain in the early 17th century, the Hispano-Moresque style survived in the province of Valencia. Later wares usually have a coarse reddish-buff body, dark blue decoration and luster.

Maiolica

Main article Maiolica
Maiolica
Maiolica is Italian tin-glazed pottery dating from the Renaissance. It is decorated in bright colours on a white background, frequently depicting historical and legendary scenes.-Name:...

.

The 15th-century wares that initiated maiolica as an art form were the product of a long technical evolution, in which medieval lead-glazed wares were improved by the addition of tin oxides under the initial influence of Islamic wares imported through Sicily. Such archaic wares are sometimes dubbed proto-maiolica. During the later 14th century, the limited palette of colors was expanded from the traditional manganese purple and copper green to embrace cobalt blue, antimony yellow and iron-oxide orange. Sgraffito wares were also produced, in which the white tin-oxide slip was decoratively scratched to produce a design from the revealed body of the ware.

Refined production of tin-glazed earthenware made for more than local needs was concentrated in central Italy from the later 13th century, especially in the contada of Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

. The city itself declined in importance in the second half of the 15th century, perhaps because of local deforestation

Deforestation

Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....

. Italian cities encouraged the start of a new pottery industry by offering tax relief, citizenship, monopoly rights and protection from outside imports. Production scattered among small communes and, after the mid-15th century, at Faenza

Faenza

Faenza is an Italian city and comune, in the province of Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna, situated 50 km southeast of Bologna.Faenza is noted for its manufacture of majolica ware glazed earthenware pottery, known from the name of the town as "faience"....

, Arezzo

Arezzo

Arezzo is a city and comune in Central Italy, capital of the province of the same name, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 km southeast of Florence, at an elevation of 296 m above sea level. In 2011 the population was about 100,000....

and Siena

Siena

Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...

. Faenza, which gave its name to faience

Faience

Faience or faïence is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed pottery on a delicate pale buff earthenware body, originally associated with Faenza in northern Italy. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip...

, was the only fair-sized city in which the ceramic industry became a major economic component. Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

produced lead-glazed wares for export. Orvieto

Orvieto

Orvieto is a city and comune in Province of Terni, southwestern Umbria, Italy situated on the flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff...

and Deruta

Deruta

Deruta is a hill town and comune in the Province of Perugia in the Umbria region of central Italy. Long known as a center of refined maiolica manufacture, Deruta remains known for its ceramics, which are exported worldwide.-History:...

both produced maioliche in the 15th century. In the 16th century, maiolica production was established at Castel Durante, Urbino

Urbino

Urbino is a walled city in the Marche region of Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482...

, Gubbio

Gubbio

Gubbio is a town and comune in the far northeastern part of the Italian province of Perugia . It is located on the lowest slope of Mt. Ingino, a small mountain of the Apennines. See also Mount Ingino Christmas Tree.-History:...

and Pesaro

Pesaro

Pesaro is a town and comune in the Italian region of the Marche, capital of the Pesaro e Urbino province, on the Adriatic. According to the 2007 census, its population was 92,206....

. Some maiolica was produced as far north as Padua

Padua

Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

, Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

and Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

and as far south as Palermo

Palermo

Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...

and Caltagirone

Caltagirone

Caltagirone is a town and comune in the province of Catania, on the island of Sicily, about 70 km southwest of Catania. It is bounded by the comuni of Acate, Gela, Grammichele, Licodia Eubea, Mazzarino, Mazzarrone, Mineo, Mirabella Imbaccari, Niscemi, Piazza Armerina, San Michele di...

in Sicily. In the 17th century Savona

Savona

Savona is a seaport and comune in the northern Italian region of Liguria, capital of the Province of Savona, in the Riviera di Ponente on the Mediterranean Sea....

began to be a prominent place of manufacture.

Some of the principal centers of production (e.g. Deruta

Deruta

and Montelupo

Montelupo

Montelupo can refer to:*Montelupo Albese, Province of Cuneo, Piedmont, Italy*Montelupo Fiorentino, Province of Florence, Tuscany, Italy*Raffaello da Montelupo - Italian sculptor*Baccio da Montelupo - Italian painter...

) still produce maiolica, which is sold in quantity in Italian tourist areas.

Delftware

Main article Delftware
Delftware
Delftware, or Delft pottery, denotes blue and white pottery made in and around Delft in the Netherlands and the tin-glazed pottery made in the Netherlands from the 16th century....

.

Delftware was made in the Netherlands and from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The main period of manufacture was 1640-1730.

The earliest tin-glazed pottery in the Netherlands was made in Antwerp in 1512. The manufacture of painted pottery may have spread from the south to the northern Netherlands in the 1560s. It was made in Middleburg and Haarlem in the 1570s and in Amsterdam in the 1580s. Much of the finer work was produced in Delft, but simple everyday tin-glazed pottery was made in places such as Gouda, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Dordrecht.

The Guild of St. Luke, to which painters in all media had to belong, admitted ten master potters in the thirty years between 1610 and 1640 and twenty in the nine years 1651 to 1660. In 1654 a gunpowder explosion in Delft destroyed many breweries and as the brewing industry was in decline they became available to pottery makers looking for larger premises.

From about 1615, the potters began to coat their pots completely in white tin glaze instead of covering only the painting surface and coating the rest with clear glaze. They then began to cover the tin glaze with a coat of clear glaze which gave depth to the fired surface and smoothness to cobalt

Cobalt

Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is found naturally only in chemically combined form. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal....

blues, ultimately creating a good resemblance to porcelain.

Although Dutch potters did not immediately imitate Chinese porcelain, they began to do after the death of the Emperor Wan-Li in 1619, when the supply to Europe was interrupted. Delftware inspired by Chinese originals persisted from about 1630 to the mid-18th century alongside European patterns.

Delftware ranged from simple household items to fancy artwork. Pictorial plates were made in abundance, illustrated with religious motifs, native Dutch scenes with windmills and fishing

Fishing

Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....

boat

Boat

A boat is a watercraft of any size designed to float or plane, to provide passage across water. Usually this water will be inland or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is a...

s, hunting scenes, landscapes and seascapes. The Delft potters also made tiles in vast numbers (estimated at eight hundred million over a period of two hundred years); many Dutch houses still have tiles that were fixed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Delftware became popular, was widely exported in Europe and reached China and Japan. Chinese and Japanese potters made porcelain versions of Delftware for export to Europe.

By the late 18th century, Delftware potters had lost their market to British porcelain and the new white earthenware.

There are good collections of old Delftware in the Rijksmuseum

Rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam or simply Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, located on the Museumplein. The museum is dedicated to arts, crafts, and history. It has a large collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age and a substantial collection of Asian art...

and the Victoria and Albert Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

English delftware

Main article English Delftware
English Delftware
English delftware is tin-glazed pottery made in the British Isles between about 1550 and the late 18th century. The main centres of production were London, Bristol and Liverpool with smaller centres at Wincanton, Glasgow and Dublin....

.

English delftware was made in the British Isles between about 1550 and the late 18th century. The main centers of production were London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

and Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

with smaller centers at Wincanton

Wincanton

Wincanton is a small town in south Somerset, southwest England. The town lies on the A303 road, the main route between London and South West England, and has some light industry...

, Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

and Dublin.

John Stow

John Stow

John Stow was an English historian and antiquarian.-Early life:The son of Thomas Stow, a tallow-chandler, he was born about 1525 in London, in the parish of St Michael, Cornhill. His father's whole rent for his house and garden was only 6s. 6d. a year, and Stow in his youth fetched milk every...

's Survey of London (1598) records the arrival in 1567 of two Antwerp potters, Jasper Andries and Jacob Jansen, in Norwich

Norwich

Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...

, where they made "Gally Paving Tiles, and vessels for Apothecaries and others, very artificially". In 1579 Jansen applied to Queen Elizabeth I for the sole right to practice "galleypotting" in London and soon set up a workshop at Aldgate

Aldgate

Aldgate was the eastern most gateway through London Wall leading from the City of London to Whitechapel and the east end of London. Aldgate gives its name to a ward of the City...

to the east of the city. There were already other Flemish potters in London, two of them in Southwark

Southwark

Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...

recorded in 1571 as "painters of pottes".

English delftware pottery and its painted decoration is similar in many respects to that from Holland, but its peculiarly English quality has been commented upon: ". . . there is a relaxed tone and a sprightliness which is preserved throughout the history of English delftware; the overriding mood is provincial and naive rather than urbane and sophisticated." Its methods and techniques were less sophisticated than those of its continental counterparts.

The earliest known piece with an English inscription is a dish dated 1600 in the London Museum. It is painted in blue, purple, green, orange and yellow and depicts the Tower of London and Old London Bridge, surrounded by the words, "THE ROSE IS RED THE LEAVES ARE GRENE GOD SAVE ELIZABETH OUR QUEENE" and an Italianate border of masks and leaves. The rim is decorated with dashes of blue and can be considered the first in series of large decorated dishes so painted and called blue-dash chargers. Blue-dash chargers, usually between about 25 and 35 cm in diameter with abstract, floral, religious, patriotic or topographical motifs, were produced in quantity by London and Bristol potters until the early 18th century. As they were kept for decoration on walls, dressers and side-tables, many have survived and they are well represented in museum collections.

Smaller and more everyday wares were also made: paving tiles, mugs, drug jars, dishes, wine bottles, posset pots, salt pots, candlesticks, fuddling cups, puzzle jugs, barber's bowls, pill slabs, bleeding bowls, porringer

Porringer

A porringer is a small dish from which Europeans and colonial Americans ate their gruel or porridge, or other soft foods.Porringers were shallow bowls, between 4" to 6" in diameter, and 1½" to 3" deep; the form originates in the medieval period in Europe and they were made in wood, ceramic, pewter...

s, and flower bricks.

Towards the end of the 17th century, changing taste led to the replacement of apothecary pots, paving tiles and large dishes by polite tablewares, delicate ornaments, punch bowls

Punch (drink)

Punch is the term for a wide assortment of drinks, both non-alcoholic and alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice. The drink was introduced from India to England in the early seventeenth century; from there its use spread to other countries...

, teapots, cocoa pots and coffee-pots.

There are good examples of English delftware in the Victoria and Albert Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

, the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, the Ashmolean Museum

Ashmolean Museum

The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...

and the Fitzwilliam Museum

Fitzwilliam Museum

The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 300,000 visitors annually. Admission is free....

Faience

Main article Faience
Faience
Faience or faïence is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed pottery on a delicate pale buff earthenware body, originally associated with Faenza in northern Italy. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip...

.

In France, centers of faience manufacturing developed from the early 18th century led in 1690 by Quimper in Brittany http://www.faience-de-quimper.com/histquim_en.html, which today possesses an interesting museum devoted to faience, and followed by Rouen

Rouen

Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...

, Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

and Lunéville

Lunéville

Lunéville is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in France.It is a sub-prefecture of the department and lies on the Meurthe River.-History:...

.

The products of faience manufactories are identified by the usual methods of ceramic connoisseurship: the character of the clay body, the character and palette of the glaze

Ceramic glaze

Glaze is a layer or coating of a vitreous substance which has been fired to fuse to a ceramic object to color, decorate, strengthen or waterproof it.-Use:...

, and the style of decoration, faïence blanche being left in its undecorated fired white slip. Faïence parlante bears mottoes often on decorative labels or banners. Apothecary

Apothecary

Apothecary is a historical name for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica to physicians, surgeons and patients — a role now served by a pharmacist and some caregivers....

wares, including albarello

Albarello

s, can bear the names of their intended contents, generally in Latin and often so abbreviated to be unrecognizable to the untutored eye. Mottoes of fellowships and associations became popular in the 18th century, leading to the faïence patriotique that was a specialty of the years of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

Current use

In the 20th century there were changes in the formulation of tin-glaze and several artist potters began to work in the medium of tin-glazed pottery.

The cost of tin oxide rose considerably during the 1918-1918 war and resulted in a search for cheaper alternatives. The first successful replacement was zirconia and later zircon

Zircon

Zircon is a mineral belonging to the group of nesosilicates. Its chemical name is zirconium silicate and its corresponding chemical formula is ZrSiO4. A common empirical formula showing some of the range of substitution in zircon is 1–x4x–y...

. Whilst zirconium compounds are not as effective opacifiers as tin oxide, their relatively low price has led to a gradual increase in their use, with an associated reduction in the use of tin oxide. The whiteness resulting from the use of zirconia has been described as more "clinical" than that from tin oxide and is preferred in some applications. Nevertheless, tin oxide still finds use in ceramic manufacture and has been widely used as the opacifier in sanitaryware, with up to 6% used in glazes. Otherwise, tin oxide in glazes, often in conjunction with zircon compounds, is generally restricted to specialist low temperature applications and use by studio potters.

At the end of the nineteenth century, William de Morgan

William De Morgan

William Frend De Morgan was an English potter and tile designer. A lifelong friend of William Morris, he designed tiles, stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. from 1863 to 1872. His tiles are often based on medieval designs or Persian patterns, and he experimented with innovative glazes and...

re-discovered the technique of firing luster on tin-glaze "to an extraordinarily high standard". Roger Fry

Roger Fry

Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...

, Vanessa Bell

Vanessa Bell

Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.- Biography and art :...

and Duncan Grant

Duncan Grant

Duncan James Corrowr Grant was a British painter and designer of textiles, potterty and theatre sets and costumes...

decorated tin-glazed pottery for the Omega Workshops

Omega Workshops

The Omega Workshops was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in 1913. It was located at 33 Fitzroy Square in London, and was founded with the intention of providing graphic expression to the essence of the Bloomsbury ethos...

in the 1920s and 1930s. Since the beginning of the 20th century there has been a revival of pottery-making in Orvieto and Deruta, the traditional centres of tin-glazed ceramics in Italy, where the shapes and designs of the medieval and renaissance period are reproduced. Picasso produced and designed much tin-glazed pottery at Vallauris

Vallauris

Vallauris is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France. It is located in the metropolitan area of Sophia-Antipolis, and is today effectively an extension of the town of Antibes, bordering it on its west side.-Population:-Culture:In...

in the south of France in the 1940s and 1950s. At the Central School of Arts and Crafts, Dora Billington

Dora Billington

Dora Billington was an English teacher of pottery and a studio potter. She was born into a family of potters in Stoke-on-Trent and studied at Hanley School of Art. She worked as a decorator for Bernard Moore, 1912-1915, and then took a diploma in ceramics at the Royal College of Art 1915-1916...

encouraged her students, including William Newland

William R. Newland (potter)

William Rupert Newland was a New Zealand born studio potter who lived in England after the Second World War.From 1945-1947 he studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art. He studied art education at the Institute of Education, 1947-8 where he learned pottery under Beth Wright, who sent him to...

and Alan Caiger-Smith

Alan Caiger-Smith

Alan Caiger-Smith MBE is a British studio potter and writer on pottery.- Life and work :He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He studied at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and read history at King's College, Cambridge...

, to use tin-glaze decoration. In Britain during the 1950s Caiger-Smith, Margaret Hine, Nicholas Vergette and others including the Rye Pottery made tin-glazed pottery, going against the trend in studio pottery towards stoneware

Stoneware

Stoneware is a vitreous or semi-vitreous ceramic ware with a fine texture. Stoneware is made from clay that is then fired in a kiln, whether by an artisan to make homeware, or in an industrial kiln for mass-produced or specialty products...

. Subsequently Caiger-Smith experimented with the technique of reduced luster on tin glaze, which had been practiced in Italy until 1700 and Spain until 1800 and had then been forgotten. Caiger-Smith trained several potters at his Aldermaston Pottery and published Tin-glaze Pottery which gives a history of maiolica, delftware and faience in Europe and the Islamic world. A selection of tin glaze pottery by contemporary Studio potters is given Tin-glazed Earthenware by Daphne Carnegy.

The Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum factory, or Royal Tichelaar Makkum, based in Makkum

Makkum

Makkum is a village in Wûnseradiel in the province Friesland of the Netherlands and has around 3500 citizens .The dutch queen Beatrix came to visit Makkum in 2008 at Queensday....

, Friesland

Friesland

Friesland is a province in the north of the Netherlands and part of the ancient region of Frisia.Until the end of 1996, the province bore Friesland as its official name. In 1997 this Dutch name lost its official status to the Frisian Fryslân...

continue the production Delftware

Delftware

Delftware, or Delft pottery, denotes blue and white pottery made in and around Delft in the Netherlands and the tin-glazed pottery made in the Netherlands from the 16th century....

using tin-glazed earthenware

Earthenware

Names

Hispano-Moresque Ware

Maiolica

Delftware

English delftware

Faience

Current use

Further reading

See also