Part II POTTERY AND PORCELAIN

Chapter 8. Continental pottery  

WITH the aid of methods learned from Near Eastern potters the Moorish conquerors of Spain established a number of potteries. There, they produced an earthenware decorated brilliantly in a copper-coloured lustre, known as Hispano-Moresque ware. With the reconquest of Spain and the expelling of the Moors, the making of this and other pottery was continued by the Spaniards themselves. These wares reached Italy in the fifteenth century by way of Majorca, and the name of that island, where they were supposed wrongly to have been made, was given to them in a corrupted form: majolica.

Italian-made majolica, a tin-glazed earthenware that is comparable to the faience of France, the Delft of Holland and the delftware of England, was at first an imitation of the imported product, but it soon achieved a style of its own. It was made principally between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, and although some was made after the latter date it has neither the interest nor the importance of the earlier pieces. The Italian ware was sent to other European countries, and inspired their potters in turn to produce ware of a comparable high standard. The painting of majolica is its greatest beauty and the artists who did it were masters of both line and colour. Not only were the nearly flat surfaces of dishes used for coloured pictures that remind us of the glory of the Italy of the early sixteenth century, but the round pot, known as an albarello, was equally lavishly and diversely painted. The chemist's shop of the time was a general meeting-place as well as a medical emporium, and the shelves held numbers of colourful albarelli containing drugs and ointments.

Among the places famous for their majolica potteries are: Faenza, Florence, Caffagiolo, Urbino, Castel Durante, Gubbio, Savona, Siena, Deruta and Venice, all of which are in the northern half of Italy, but there were many less-important centres in both north and south. The subject of majolica is a very wide one; much study has been given to it and many books written about it during the past hundred years. Only rarely are fine specimens to be obtained and, understandably, when they are, they command high prices.

Italian majolica was exported to all the countries of Europe, and greatly affected the wares they made. In some instances, Italian potters were induced to settle abroad and teach local men how to improve their work. This occurred at Antwerp, in particular, and with the invasion of Flanders by the Spaniards in the late sixteenth century the potters fled northwards to Holland.

Dutch tin-glazed pottery, known by the name of the town of Delft where it became established eventually, was made in great quantities and much was sent to England. Not only was there a big trade in dishes and other domestic wares, but Dutch tiles were sent also. These were of sufficient importance to become a separate branch of pottery-making; some men made them to the exclusion of all else, and sets of tiles were painted to be placed together and form pictures.

Germany, also, had numerous potteries making tin-glazed wares, and those of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Hanau and Bayreuth were outstanding centres; the first-named, together with Nuremburg, being noted for making the great glazed and decorated pottery stoves used for heating rooms in many Continental countries. Much of the output resembled the earthenware being made elsewhere at the time, and much remains confused with contemporary English and Dutch work. Many German and Swiss potters made lead-glazed wares with slip and sgraffito decoration; much of it inscribed and dated. There were big centres for the making of stoneware at Cologne and Siegburg, the latter near Bonn. Much of the output was decorated elaborately with impressed patterns, and a large quantity of bellarmines was made; these are jugs with fat bodies and short thin necks, the head of a bearded man impressed on the front.

Bernard Palissy, whose life-span embraced almost the whole of the sixteenth century, made dishes and other pieces modelled with lizards, shells, leaves and fishes. The clay of which these are made is whitish, and Palissy and his followers covered it effectively with coloured transparent glazes. It is said that 'no class of pottery has been so widely copied for fraud'.

The white lead-glazed earthenware of St Porchaire was decorated in an unusual manner by impressing it in patterns with small metal stamps and filling the marks with coloured clays. This small sixteenth-century pottery has had a chequered literary history, and a century ago was the subject of speculation and bitter argument among experts; first stated to have been at Lyons, then at Beauvais, and again Oiron, it has been decided that it was actually located at St Porchaire, north of Bordeaux. Only just over sixty pieces of the ware survive, and most of them are in museums. It has been faked, and the English Minton factory made exact copies of known examples.

Other French potters were affected closely by Italian work, but by the seventeenth century the factory at Rouen was making a tin-glazed majolica of character with decoration in red and blue. Potteries at Marseilles, Moustiers, Strasbourg, and elsewhere shortly became prominent, and today French faience is recognized as having a distinction of its own that rivals porcelain. It was well made and well painted, the shapes were interesting and often strikingly unusual.

The Swedish potteries at Marieberg and Rorstrand made excellent wares in original shapes with fine decoration towards the end of the eighteenth century. At about the same date a Norwegian factory at Herreboe made some equally interesting pieces. Productions from these factories are rare outside Scandinavia.

All types of wares were made in Portugal, but most are indistinguishable from those of Spain, Italy and Holland. A century ago, a pottery was founded at Caldas da Rainha by Manuel Mafra, and has made imitations of Palissy-ware and other colour-glazed pieces ever since. Some bear the maker's mark, others do not.

1.     Above: English seventeenth-century oak and walnut furniture: tall-back walnut chairs, 1675; chairs with upholstered backs and seats and turned legs, 1650; oak table with carved freize, 1650; oak cupboard, 1630; oak panelling, 1620.

2.     Below: English eighteenth-century mahogany furniture: dining chairs, 1750; dining table, 1790; sideboard, 1790.

3.     Above: English early eighteenth-century furniture: bureau decorated in red and gold lacquer, 1705; walnut chair with cabriole legs and turned stretchers, 1710; carved walnut chair with needlework cover to back and seat, 1725; mahogany and walnut table with carved freize and cabriole legs, 1750.

4.     Below: Late eighteenth early nineteenth-century English furniture: sabre-legged mahogany chair, 1810; child's chair of painted beechwood, 1835; inlaid mahogany sideboard, 1795; rosewood chair, 1825.

5.     Above: Chinese porcelain: figure of Kwan Yin (Goddess of Mercy) decorated with splashes of green, yellow and aubergine (brown-purple), K'ang Hsi; plate painted in blue with the coat-of-arms of James, first Earl of Charlemont, who was created an Earl in 1763; Te-Hua white porcelain figure of Kwan Yin, eighteenth century; small bowl with famille rose decoration, late eighteenth century; wine bottle with famille verte decoration, K'ang Hsi, late seventeenth century.

6.     Below: Japanese works of art: dagger with bronze handle (Kodzuka) inlaid with a pattern of fishes by Ichijoshi Hirotoshi; two-fold screen in Shibayama work on gold lacquer in a carved ivory frame; circular sword mount (Tsuba) of iron inset with gold; ivory carving of two mice with a hens egg; gold lacquer box and cover in the form of Daikoku (a mythological character), by Yoshikawa Joshinsai; wood carving of a cat seated on a melon and being dragged along by seven rats, signed by Homin; a gold lacquer Inro with a design of flying cranes, by Kajikawa, with a lacquer Ojime and a fiat circular Netsuke.

7.     Above: Continental eighteenth-century porcelain: Furstenburg bust of the poet Horace, 1810: Dresden dish painted with flowers, 1760; Zurich tea caddy, 1770; Dresden group of two lovers, 1750; Dresden saucer painted with a mock-Oriental scene, 1735; Sevres plate, 1760; Doccia needlecase, 1760.

8.     Below: Late seventeenth-century Mortlake tapestry of boys playing at acrobatics.