Pottery

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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 molded-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 majolica-influenced pottery. In Germany, where it flourished until the 18th century, it was called fayence. After the center of its manufacture shifted from Antwerp to Delft in the mid-17th century, the name delftware, even for its English variation, came into use. The 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 covered the color of the clay body, providing a surface for painting any glaze color successful at moderate to high earthenware temperatures. Silver and gold were used for Spanish lusterware, 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.

The full impact of Ming porcelain was felt throughout Europe in the first half of the 17th century, particularly in the golden age of delftware (1630-1700). The pottery became thinner, its decoration more delicate. Manganese purple outlines were drawn on the clay before the biscuit firing; then the underglaze blue and the final lead-and-tin glaze were applied. 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 created 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.

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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 center 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 colored 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; basaltes ware, an unglazed black stoneware; and jasperware, made of white stoneware clay that had been colored 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 pearl ware, an extremely pale creamware with a bluish tint to its glaze.

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European Porcelain

The first soft-paste porcelains, cream rather than white in color, were made in Italy in the 16th century. The technique of making hard-paste porcelain was developed by the German ceramist Johann Friedrich Böttiger in 1708 or 1709. A factory was established in Meissen, Germany, in 1710. Because Böttiger did some of his early work near the city of Dresden, Meissen porcelain is sometimes known as Dresden porcelain. The early success of Meissen was due in part to the high artistic level of its decoration. Meissen was the preferred European porcelain until about 1756, when Sèvres became increasingly popular.

Sèvres, the most celebrated French porcelain, was first produced in Vincennes in 1738. Through the influence of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV, the factory was moved from Vincennes to Sèvres in 1756. Sèvres porcelain is renowned for its richly colored backgrounds and white panels decorated with birds. The production of hard-paste porcelain began in Limoges in 1771, when deposits of kaolin were discovered near that city. In 1784 the Limoges factory became a subsidiary of the royal factory in Sèvres.

The best early English porcelain was made in Chelsea in 1745. After its factory was sold to one in Derby in 1769, neoclassical style dominated domestic ware and figurines. In the 1740s a patent was taken out by porcelain makers at Bow in London, using bone ash in the clay body. The Lowestoft factory in Suffolk (established about 1757) used a similar formula. Glassy soft-paste porcelain was made in Staffordshire in the 18th century; Josiah Spode of that town was credited with having introduced the Staffordshire variety of Bow bone china.

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19th and 20th Centuries

Inexpensive transfer-printed wares for mass sale were popular in 19th-century England and on the Continent, as were relief-decorated wares. These spread to the United States, along with the manganese-brown Rockingham glazes developed in England in the early 19th century; the latter were popular with New Jersey and Ohio potteries. Mass-produced ware gradually displaced the dominant U.S. folk pottery, a vigorous salt-glazed stoneware.

Commercially produced ceramics after 1860 were of high quality. Some of the finest were and still are made by the Royal Porcelain factory in Copenhagen. The introduction of the art nouveau style, the Paris Exhibition of 1900, and the ideals of the Bauhaus school in the 1920s all influenced industrial ceramic design.

The individual studio or artist potter has been as important to the history of modern pottery as the industrial potter. The English Arts and Crafts movement of the 1860s influenced such potters as William De Morgan and (after 1871) the salt-glazed stoneware of the Doulton factories in Lambeth. In the United States the Rookwood factory (1880, Cincinnati, Ohio), the Grueby Faience Company (1897, Boston), and the Pewabic Pottery Works (1900, Detroit) brought prestige to the artist-potter. The international reputation of the English potters Bernard Leach—trained in Japan and inspired by Japanese and English folk potters—and Michael Ambrose Cardew—a leader in the 20th-century revival of pottery—further enhanced the contemporary tradition of the artist-artisan in clay. Pottery is also produced for a wide range of industrial purposes, including for use as plumbing fixtures and aerospace components.

See also Ceramics.

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