Tin Enameled Pottery

ART PRIMER CERAMIC SERIES, No. PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM AND SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART TIN ENAMELED POTTERY MAIOLICA, DELFT AND OTHER STANNIFEROUS FAIENCE BY EDWIN ATLEE BARBER, A. M., PH. D. CURATOR PRINTED FOR THE MUSEUM PHILADELPHIA 1906 PREFATORY NOTE. The Art Primers of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art are designed to furnish, in a condensed form, for the use of collectors, historical and art students and artisans, the most reliable information, based on the latest discoveries relating to the various industrial arts. Each monograph, complete in itself, contains a historical sketch, review of processes, description of characteristic examples of the best productions, and all available data that will serve to facilitate the identification of specimens. In other words, these booklets are intended to serve as authori tative and permanent reference works on the various subjects treated. The illustrations employed, unless otherwise stated, are reproductions of examples in the Museum collections. In reviewing the various branches of ceramics the geographical arrangement used by other writers has given place to the natural or technical classification, to permit the grouping together of simi lar wares of all countries and times, whereby pottery, or opaque ware, is classified according to glaze, its most distinctive feature, while porcelain, or translucent ware, is grouped according to body In preparing the material for Tin Enameled Pottery, the author has consulted the principal authorities on the various branches of the subject, but he is particularly indebted, for many of the facts presented, to the South Kensington Handbook on Maiolica, by T. Drury E. Fortnum Europdischen Fayencen, by Dr. Justus Brinck mann English Earthenware and Stoneware, by William Burton French Faience, by M. L, Solon Histoire des Faiences Pafriotiqu sous La Revolution, by M. Champfleury Dictmnaire de. la Oeramigue, by Edouard Garnier Dutch Pottery and Porcelain, by W, Pitcairn Knowles Hispano-Moresque Ware of the Fifteenth Century, by A. van de Put Old English Pottery, Named, Dated and Inscribed, by John Eliot Hodgkin and Edith HodgMn, and BRstoire Generate de la Fai nce Andenne, by Kis Paquot. The matter relating to Talavera ware and the recently discovered Mexican or Puebla maiolica appears here for the first time. E. A. B. TIN ENAMELED POTTERY. CHARACTERISTICS. Tin Enameled Pottery, known also as Stanniferous Faience from starwwm, the Latin word for tin, is a coarse, more or less porous, ware covered with a heavy, opaque, putty-like white enamel, resembling in appearance thick white lead paint, which, as a rule, shows on the under sides of pieces, or the backs of plates, in ridges or drops where its flow has ceased. The word enamel, as here used, signifies an opaque coating on the ware, as distinguished from glaze, which is transparent or translucent. True majolica and delft wares are enameled, ordinary pottery, such as modern red or brown kitchen ware, is glazed. Tin enamel is a composition of glass and oxide of lead, to which has been added a certain portion of oxide of tin. The latter ingredient produces the white, opaque effect hence the name, stanniferous enamel. ORIGIN. It is not known exactly when and where tin was first used in the glazing of earthenware. It is a well established fact that the bricks of Babylonia and Assyria were coated with a white stannif erous enamel many centuries before the appearance of maiolica in Italy. At a later period tin enamel was in use by the Arabs, and early in the fourteenth century this method of glazing was extensively employed by the Moorish potters of Spain, It was not until the fifteenth century, however that the so-called His pano-Moresque wares of Malaga and Valencia, and the maiolica of the Italian potters began to be produced in abundance. For convenience of study we may divide Tin Enameled Pottery into three groups, as follows I. MAIOLICA OF ITALY, SPAIN AND MEXICO...