tin-glazed earthenware

tin-glazed earthenware, earthenware covered with an opaque glaze that, unless colour has been added, is white. It is variously called faience, majolica, and delftware. Essentially it is lead glaze made opaque by the addition of tin oxide; tin glaze was no doubt originally devised to conceal flaws of colour in a fired-clay body. Tin-glazed ware is usually decorated with high-temperature colours. But unlike lead-glazed earthenware, which is painted on a fired unglazed body, tin-glazed ware is painted on a fired body that has been coated with raw, or unfired, glaze material; the ware is then fired a second time, at a lower temperature, indelibly fusing pigments and glaze. (Sometimes a transparent lead glaze is added over the painted decoration, requiring a third firing.) The advantage of tin glaze over lead is that it does not run when fired, and thus the pigments do not blur; the disadvantage is that—as in fresco painting, which is executed on fresh plaster—the surface of the glaze is absorbent, making alterations impossible.

The art of tin-glazing, discovered by the Assyrians and revived in Mesopotamia about the 9th century, spread to Moorish Spain and was conveyed to Italy by way of the island of Majorca, whence the name majolica (maiolica), by which it is known in Italy. Italian majolica, particularly that made in Faenza, was much admired, and in the early 16th century it was imitated in France. The word faience, first applied to French tin-glazed earthenware and then to wares made in Spain, Scandinavia, and Germany, was certainly derived from Faenza. In the early 17th century, tin-glazed earthenware was made in Holland, in the town of Delft, whence the art was introduced into England. Delft thus refers to tin-glazed wares produced both in the Netherlands and in England.

The word majolica is sometimes used loosely when applied to wares made in the Italian style but outside Italy, just as faience is used incorrectly when applied to Egyptian blue-glazed ware and certain kinds of Middle Eastern ware.