Tin-glazed pottery is earthenware covered in lead glaze with added tin oxide which is white, shiny and opaque (see tin-glazing for the chemistry); usually this provides a background for brightly painted decoration. It has been important in Islamic and European pottery, but very little used in East Asia. The pottery body is usually made of red or buff-colored earthenware and the white glaze imitated Chinese porcelain. The decoration on tin-glazed pottery is usually applied to the unfired glaze surface by brush with metallic oxides, commonly cobalt oxide, copper oxide, iron oxide, manganese dioxide and antimony oxide. The makers of Italian tin-glazed pottery from the late Renaissance blended oxides to produce detailed and realistic polychrome paintings. The earliest tin-glazed pottery appears to have been made in Iraq in the 9th century, the oldest fragments having been excavated during the First World War from the palace of Samarra about fifty miles north of Baghdad. From there it spread to Egypt, Persia and Spain before reaching Italy in mid-15th century, early Renaissance, Holland in the 16th century and England, 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 by Josiah Wedgwood, and increasingly cheap European porcelain and Chinese export porcelain, reduced the demand for tin-glaze Delftware, faience and majolica. The rise in the cost of tin oxide during the First World War led to its partial substitution by zirconium 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, sometimes pronounced and spelt majolica by English speakers and authors. When the technique was taken up in the Netherlands, it became known as delftware as much of it was made in the town of Delft. Dutch potters brought it to England in around 1600, and wares produced there are known as English delftware or galleyware. In France it was known as faience. The word maiolica is thought to have come from the medieval Italian word for Mallorca, 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 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 tin-glazed 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 the colorful lead-glazed earthenware which they called Palissy ware, soon also to become known as majolica. So now there were two distinct products with the same name. "In the 1870s, the curators of the South Kensington Museum 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." A style of brightly coloured 19th-century lead-glazed earthenware was also called "majolica", and is now known as Victorian majolica 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
The Moors introduced tin-glazed pottery to Spain after the conquest of 711. 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 (a tall jar), luster dishes with coats of arms, 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, 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. 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
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