Faience

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the architectural material, see Glazed architectural terra-cotta. For the ceramics of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Indian sites of the Indus Valley, see Egyptian faience.
Modern bowl in a traditional pattern, made in Faenza, Italy, which gave its name to the type
Niderviller faience
, by a French factory that also made porcelain, 1760–65

Faience or faïence (

oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major advance in the history of pottery. The invention seems to have been made in Iran or the Middle East before the ninth century. A kiln capable of producing temperatures exceeding 1,000 °C (1,830 °F) was required to achieve this result, the result of millennia of refined pottery-making traditions. The term is now used for a wide variety of pottery from several parts of the world, including many types of European painted wares, often produced as cheaper versions of porcelain
styles.

English generally uses various other terms for well-known sub-types of faience. Italian tin-glazed earthenware, at least the early forms, is called maiolica in English, Dutch wares are called Delftware, and their English equivalents English delftware, leaving "faience" as the normal term in English for French, German, Spanish, Portuguese wares and those of other countries not mentioned (it is also the usual French term, and fayence in German). The name faience is simply the French name for Faenza, in the Romagna near Ravenna, Italy, where a painted majolica ware on a clean, opaque pure-white ground, was produced for export as early as the fifteenth century.

Hispano-Moresque ware dish from Manises, 15th century, the earliest type of European faience

Technically, lead-glazed earthenware, such as the French sixteenth-century Saint-Porchaire ware, does not properly qualify as faience, but the distinction is not usually maintained. Semi-vitreous stoneware may be glazed like faience. Egyptian faience is not really faience, or pottery, at all, but made of a vitreous frit, and so closer to glass.

In English 19th-century usage "faience" was often used to describe "any earthenware with

glazed architectural terracotta and Victorian majolica
, adding a further complexity to the list of meanings of the word.

History

Western Mediterranean

Main articles:
Hispano-Moresque wares and maiolica

The

Hispano-Moresque wares", either directly or via the Balearic Islands
to Italy and the rest of Europe. Later these industries continued under Christian lords.

"

Majorca, which was a transshipping point for refined tin-glazed earthenwares shipped to Italy from the kingdom of Aragon at the close of the Middle Ages
. This type of pottery owed much to its Moorish inheritance.

In Italy, locally produced tin-glazed earthenwares, now called maiolica, initiated in the fourteenth century, reached a peak in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. After about 1600, these lost their appeal to elite customers, and the quality of painting declined, with geometric designs and simple shapes replacing the complicated and sophisticated scenes of the best period. Production continues to the present day in many centres, and the wares are again called "faience" in English (though usually still maiolica in Italian). At some point "faience" as a term for pottery from Faenza in northern Italy was a general term used in French, and then reached English.[3]

French and northern European faïence

Rococo tureen, Marseille, c. 1770

The first northerners to imitate the tin-glazed earthenwares being imported from Italy were the Dutch.

blue and white Chinese export porcelain that was beginning to reach Europe, soon followed by Japanese export porcelain
. From the later half of the century the Dutch were manufacturing and exporting very large quantities, some in its own recognisably Dutch style, as well as copying East Asian porcelain.

In France, the first well-known painter of faïence was

Lunéville
and many smaller centres. The cluster of factories in the south were generally the most innovative, while Strasbourg and other centres near the Rhine were much influenced by German porcelain.

The products of faience manufactories are identified by the usual methods of ceramic connoisseurship: the character of the clay body, the character and palette of the glaze, and the style of decoration, faïence blanche being left in its undecorated fired white slip. Faïence parlante (especially from Nevers) bears mottoes often on decorative labels or banners. Apothecary wares, including albarelli, can bear the names of their intended contents, generally in Latin and often so abbreviated to be unrecognizable to the untutored eye. Mottoes of fellowships and associations became popular in the 18th century, leading to the faïence patriotique that was a specialty of the years of the French Revolution.

"English delftware" produced in Lambeth, London, and at other centres, from the late sixteenth century, provided apothecaries with jars for wet and dry drugs, among a wide range of wares. Large painted dishes were produced for weddings and other special occasions, with crude decoration that later appealed to collectors of English folk art. Many of the early potters in London were Flemish.[4] By about 1600, blue-and-white wares were being produced, labelling the contents within decorative borders. The production was slowly superseded in the first half of the eighteenth century with the introduction of cheap creamware.

Luneville faience

Dutch potters in northern (and Protestant) Germany established German centres of faience: the first manufactories in Germany were opened at Hanau (1661) and Heusenstamm (1662), soon moved to nearby Frankfurt. In Switzerland, Zunfthaus zur Meisen near Fraumünster church houses the porcelain and faience collection of the Swiss National Museum in Zürich.

By the mid-18th centuries many French factories produced (as well as simpler wares) pieces that followed the Rococo styles of the French porcelain factories and often hired and trained painters with the skill to produce work of a quality that sometimes approached them.

The products of French faience manufactories, rarely marked, are identified by the usual methods of ceramic connoisseurship: the character of the

body, the character and palette of the glaze, and the style of decoration, faïence blanche being left in its undecorated fired white slip. Faïence parlante bears mottoes often on decorative labels or banners. Wares for apothecaries, including albarello, can bear the names of their intended contents, generally in Latin and often so abbreviated to be unrecognizable to the untutored eye. Mottoes of fellowships and associations became popular in the 18th century, leading to the Faïence patriotique that was a specialty of the years of the French Revolution
.

By the mid-18th century, glazed earthenware made in Liguria was imitating decors of its Dutch and French rivals.

In the course of the later 18th century, cheaper

vitrifies—closed the last of the traditional makers' ateliers even for beer steins. At the low end of the market, local manufactories continued to supply regional markets with coarse and simple wares, and many local varieties have continued to be made in versions of the old styles as a form of folk art
, and today for tourists.

Revival

In the 19th century two

William de Morgan re-discovered the technique of lustered faience "to an extraordinarily high standard".[8]

Ancient frit wares called "faience"

Egyptian pendant of lions or Apis Bull.[9] The Walters Art Museum.
Main article: Egyptian faience

The term faience broadly encompassed finely glazed ceramic beads, figures and other small objects found in

Kerma are characterized by extensive amounts of blue faience, which was developed by the natives of Kerma independently of Egyptian techniques.[11][12][13] Examples of ancient faience are also found in Minoan Crete, which was likely influenced by Egyptian culture. Faience material, for instance, has been recovered from the Knossos archaeological site.[14]

Types

Painting a plate before firing in a kiln, Gülşehir, Cappadocia, Turkey

Many centres of traditional manufacture are recognized, as well as some individual ateliers. A partial list follows.

France

Italy

Faience from Laterza, Italy

Spain

Germany

England

Staffordshire pottery
developed in the 18th century, many of which did not need tin-glazes to achieve a white colour. These were hugely successful and exported to Europe and the Americas. They are not called "faience" in English, but may be in other languages, e.g. creamware was known as faience fine in France.

Denmark

Netherlands

Norway

Sweden

Austria

  • Gmunden (pottery)

Mexico

  • Talavera (pottery)

Canada

United States

See also

Notes

  1. ISBN 1472584430, 9781472584434, google books
  2. ^ "the larger one" in Medieval Latin and Italian, as opposed to Menorca, "the smaller one" of the Balearic Islands
  3. ^ Alan Caiger-Smith, 1973. Tin-Glazed Pottery (London: Faber and Faber).
  4. ^ (Royal Pharmaceutical Society) "English Delftware Storage Jars" Archived 2007-10-06 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ISBN 0300083874, 9780300083873, google books
  6. ^ 1862, Editorial Staff, Art Journal Catalogue, Exhibited Class XXXV, no.6873, D78., page #:8 https://archive.org/details/artjournalillust1863lond/page/n25?q=1862+Art+journal+Catalogue "The Italian Vase [top, left, p.8] is Majolica, […] the painting being executed by a process not hitherto employed. […] The
    Ewer [bottom, middle, p.8] is a Palissy
    vase.
  7. ^ 1999, Paul Atterbury and Maureen Batkin, Dictionary of Minton, ACC Art Books (2nd Revised edition 1 Jan. 1999), page #:124 "[…] the coloured glaze decorated wares which we now call majolica, but which Minton referred to as Palissy wares."
  8. ^ Carnegy, p.65
  9. The Walters Art Museum
    .
  10. ^ Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide, 2012[full citation needed]
  11. ^ Julian Henderson, The Science & Archaeology of Materials, London: ROutledge 200: 54)
  12. ^ W SS, 'Glazed Faience Tiles found at Kerma in the Sudan,' Museum of the Fine Arts, Vol.LX:322, Boston 1962, p. 136
  13. ^ Peter Lacovara, 'Nubian Faience', in ed. Florence D Friendman, Gifts of the Nile - Ancient Egyptian Faience, London: Thames & Hudson, 1998, 46-49)
  14. ^ C. Michael Hogan, Knossos fieldnotes, Modern Antiquarian (2007)

Bibliography

External links

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