Pottery

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Medieval Arabic Styles

In the 9th century, caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty encouraged local artisans to imitate imported Tang pottery with local clay and glazes. The Arab potters soon developed their own style—first in unglazed pottery with moulded, stamped, and applied-relief decoration, then in underglaze sgraffito designs and in opaque white tin-glazed bowls with painted flowers and inscriptions, and finally in lustre painting. Lustreware is earthenware with an opaque white tin glaze, fired once, then painted with metallic pigments and refired in a reduction kiln. The designs reflected metallic hues of red, bronze, lime, and yellow.

When potters migrated from Iraq to the western Muslim world in the 10th century, the lustre technique moved with them. As with tin glazes, lustreware ultimately influenced Europe by way of Moorish Spain. It was also popular in Fatimid Egypt (969-1171) and Iran.

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Iran and Turkey

The Seljuk dynasty that ruled Iran, Iraq, Asia Minor, and Syria in the 12th and 13th centuries found substitutes for porcelain, and the Iranian cities of Rayy and Kāshān became centres for this white ware. Another fine Seljuk type was Mina'i ware, an enamel-overglaze pottery that, in its delicacy, imitated illuminated manuscripts. Kāshān potters, after the 13th-century Mongol conquests, used green glazes influenced by Chinese celadons. Cobalt-blue glazes appeared in Iran in the 9th century, later falling from use. They were taken up again in the 14th to the 18th century in response to the popularity of blue-and-white ware with Chinese and European clients.

İznik was the centre for Turkish pottery. There slip-painted pieces influenced by Persian and Afghanistani ware pre-dated the Ottoman Turks' conquest of the region. Later, between 1490 and 1700, İznik ware displayed decorations painted under a thin transparent glaze on a loose-textured white body; the classic İznik palette consisted of turquoise, strong blue, purple, and green with accents of iron red slip. Later designs were in shades of cobalt blue in imitation of the Chinese Ming ware.

During the Safavid dynasty, Kubachi ware, contemporary to İznik pottery, was probably made in north-western Iran, and not at the town of Kubachi where it was found. Characteristic Kubachi pieces were large polychrome plates, painted underneath their crackle glazes. Gombroon ware, exported from that Persian Gulf port to Europe and the Far East in the 16th and 17th centuries, had incised decorations on translucent white earthenware bodies. Copper-coloured Persian lustreware was fashionable in the 17th century, as was polychrome painted ware.

In general, Islamic pottery was either thrown or made in moulds. Shapes were either Chinese-inspired or were the basic shapes of metalwork. In addition to lustreware, the most creative work was the manufacture of tiles for mosques.

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Europe to 1800

Islamic tin-glazed pottery and lustreware became the ceramics of Spain from the 13th through to the 15th century. At times called Hispano-Moresque ware, it had its centre of manufacture at the Valencian town of Manises. It was exported from Majorca, and thus the extremely popular Italian Renaissance ceramics that it influenced were known as maiolica, from the Italian name for Majorca.

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Maiolica, Faience, and Delftware

In maiolica, painting over the white glaze was further developed, in yellow, orange, green, turquoise, blue, purplish-brown, and black. Frequently a transparent overglaze was added, as well as incised and moulded-relief decoration. Made in many Italian cities in the 15th to 16th century, this ware bore little resemblance to its Spanish namesake. After 1600 the name faience was applied to the French variation of this tin-glazed ware, as well as to 16th- and 17th-century French and Belgian maiolica-influenced pottery. In Germany, where it flourished until the 18th century, it was called fayence. After the centre of its manufacture shifted from Antwerp to Delft in the mid-17th century, the name delftware, even for its English variation, came into use. English delftware was made in London, Liverpool, and Bristol and in Dublin, until creamware (see Stoneware and Lead-Glazed Earthenware, below) began to replace it in the 1770s.

Tin-glazed ware remained popular in Europe until the early 19th century. It was made by dipping the biscuit-fired pot into a basic lead glaze to which tin oxide (an opacifier and whitener) had been added. This produced a dense white that completely hid the colour of the clay body, providing a surface for painting any glaze colour successful at earthenware temperatures. Silver and gold were used for Spanish lustreware, painted over the fired glaze and refired in a low-temperature reduction kiln. In the 18th century, the fired tin glaze was painted with overglaze enamels and the pottery refired in a muffle kiln.

Efforts to imitate Ming porcelain, which was flooding into Europe from China in the first half of the 17th century, resulted in the golden age of delftware (1630-1700). The pottery became thinner, its decoration more delicate. Colour combinations were either shades of cobalt blue or manganese purple outlines with blue infills. Tiles, plates, jugs, and vases were made, and the different Delft factory marks were imitated, even by the Chinese.

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Stoneware and Lead-Glazed Earthenware

European stoneware was developed in Germany at the end of the 14th century. It was salt-glazed: common salt (an alkali) was thrown into the kiln, and soda from the salt combined with silica in the body to form a glassy layer on the pot's surface. Hafner ware, a lead-glazed earthenware, was popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, with many vessels imitating metal jugs and tankards. Traditional English earthenware was decorated with slips and lead glazed, as was central European peasant pottery, taken to America by emigrants.

English stoneware was made on a large scale only after the late 17th century. The best of Staffordshire white salt-glazed stoneware was made between 1720 and 1760. Staffordshire was also a centre for creamware, a popular lead-glazed earthenware made of Devonshire white clay mixed with calcined flint. In 1754 the English ceramist Josiah Wedgwood began to experiment with coloured creamware. He established his own factory, but often worked with others who did transfer printing (introduced by the Worcester Porcelain Company in the 1750s). He also produced red stoneware; basalt ware, an unglazed black stoneware; and jasperware, made of white stoneware clay that had been coloured by the addition of metal oxides. Jasperware was usually ornamented with white relief portraits or Greek Classical scenes. Wedgwood's greatest contribution to European ceramics, however, was his fine pearlware, an extremely pale creamware with a bluish tint to its glaze.