page_title: Maiolica
section_title: Tin-glazed earthenware
hierarchical_section_title: Maiolica / Tin-glazed earthenware
caption_attribution_description: Britain Loves Wikipedia at the Victoria and Albert Museum Dish with bird English: Dish with bird, Italy, Orvieto, 1270-1330 The design is probably copied from Islamic pottery Tin-glazed earthenware painted in mineral oxides, manganese and copper Collection ID: C.202-1928 This photo was taken as part of Britain Loves Wikipedia in February 2010 by Valerie McGlinchey.
context_page_description: Maiolica is tin-glazed pottery decorated in colours on a white background. Italian maiolica dating from the Renaissance period is the most renowned. When depicting historical and mythical scenes, these works were known as istoriato wares. By the late 15th century, several places, mainly small cities in northern and central Italy, were producing sophisticated pieces for a luxury market in Italy and beyond. In France maiolica developed as faience, in the Netherlands and England as delftware, and in Mexico as talavera.
  In English the spelling was anglicised to majolica but the pronunciation usually preserved the vowel with an i as in kite.
context_section_description: Tin glazing creates a white, opaque surface for painting. The colours are applied as metallic oxides or as fritted underglazes to the unfired glaze, which absorbs pigment like fresco, making errors impossible to fix, but preserving the brilliant colors.  Sometimes the surface is covered with a second glaze (called coperta by the Italians) that lends greater shine and brilliance to the wares. In the case of lustred wares, a further oxygen-starved firing at a lower temperature is required.  Kilns required wood as well as suitable clay. Glaze was made from sand, wine lees, lead compounds and tin compounds. Tin-glazed earthenware is frequently prone to flaking and somewhat delicate.
  Analysis of samples of Italian maiolica pottery from the Middle Ages has indicated that tin was not always a component of the glaze, whose chemical composition varied.
  The fifteenth-century wares that initiated maiolica as an art form were the product of an evolution in which medieval lead-glazed earthenwares were improved by the addition of tin oxides under the influence of Islamic wares imported through Sicily. Such archaic wares are sometimes called "proto-maiolica". During the later fourteenth century, the limited palette of colours for earthenware decorated with coloured lead glazes (no added tin oxide) was expanded from the traditional manganese purple and copper green to include cobalt blue, antimony yellow and iron-oxide orange. Sgraffito wares were also produced, in which the white tin-oxide glaze was scratched through to produce a design from the revealed body of the ware. Scrap sgraffito ware excavated from kilns in Bacchereto, Montelupo and Florence show that such wares were produced more widely than at Perugia and Città di Castello, the places to which they have been traditionally attributed.
caption: Dish with bird, in Islamic-derived style, Orvieto, c. 1270–1330 (Victoria and Albert Museum)
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