Maiolica

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Maiolica (sometimes "majolica") designates Italian tin-glazed earthenware dating from the Renaissance.

The name is thought to come from the medieval Italian word for Majorca, an island on the route for ships that brought Spanish lustred Hispano-Moresque wares, to Italy from Valencia in the 15th and 16th centuries, or from the Spanish term obra de Malaga that denotes “[imported] wares from Malaga”. During the Renaissance, the term maiolica referred solely to lusterware, including both Italian-made and Spanish imports, but eventually the term came to be used when describing ceramics made in Italy, lustered or not, that were tin-glazed earthenware covered. With thje Spanish conquest of Mexico, tin-glazed maiolica wares came to be produced in the Valley of Mexico as early as 1540, at first in imitation of tin-glazed pottery imported from Seville.^[1]

Tin glaze gives artists a brilliant white, opaque surface to paint over. The colours are applied as metallic oxides to the unfired glaze, which absorbs pigment like fresco, making errors impossible to fix, but preserving the brilliant colors of the Renaissance in a way that paintings cannot.

Refined production of tin-glazed earthenwares made for more than local needs was concentrated in central Italy, especially in Tuscany. Florentine wares were produced in small centers, such as Montelupo, which provided the experienced potters who were set up in 1506 at Cafaggiolo by its Medici lord. ^[2] and imitated in the fifteenth century at Arezzo and Siena. In Romagna, Faenza, which gave its name to faience, produced fine maiolica from the early fifteenth century. Bologna produced lead-glazed wares for export. Orvieto and Deruta both produced maioliche in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century, maiolica production was established at Castel Durante, Urbino, Gubbio and Pesaro. Some maiolica was produced as far north as Padua, Venice and Turin and as far south as Palermo and Caltagirone in Sicily.^[3] In the seventeenth century Savona began to be a prominent place of manufacture.

An important mid-sixteenth century document for the techniques of maiolica painting is the treatise of Cipriano Piccolpasso. Individual sixteenth-century masters like Nicola da Urbino, Francesco Xanto Avelli, Guido Durantino and Orazio Fontana of Urbino and Maestro Giorgio of Gubbio all deserve individual treatment.

Some of the principal centers of production (e.g. Deruta and Montelupo) still produce maiolica, which is sold in quantity in Italian tourist areas. Modern maiolica looks different from old maiolica because its glaze is usually opacified with the cheaper zircon rather than tin, though there are potteries that specialise in making authentic-looking Renaissance-style pieces with genuine tin-glaze.

"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."^[4] The term "maiolica" is sometimes applied to modern tin-glazed ware made by studio potters (as in Osterman's book, see below).

The alternative spelling, "majolica", is now currently reserved for nineteenth-century earthenwares with clear, coloured glazes.

[edit] Notes

^ Florence C. lister and Robert H. lister, Sixteenth Century Maiolica Pottery in the Valley of Mexico (Tucson: Anthrological Papers of the University of Arizona) 1982.
^ Rackham p 8.
^ Rackham, p. 9; Caiger-Smith p.82
^ Honey, p.387

[edit] Bibliography

Caiger-Smith, Alan, Tin-Glaze Pottery in Europe and the Islamic World: The Tradition of 1000 Years in Maiolica, Faience and Delftware (Faber and Faber, 1973) ISBN 0-571-09349-3

Cohen, David Harris and Hess, Catherine, A Guide To Looking At Italian Ceramics (J. Paul Getty Museum in association with British Museum Press, 1993)

Honey, W.B., European Ceramic Art (Faber and Faber, 1952)

Mussachio, Jacqueline, Marvels of Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics from the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Bunker Hill Publishing, 2004)

Osterman, Matthias, The New Maiolica: Contemporary Approaces to Colour and Technique (A&C Black/University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) ISBN 0-7136-4878-3