Studio: international art (47.1909)

Hispano-Moresque Lustre IVare

FIG. 5.—LUSTRE DISH WITH DARK BLUE BIRD AND LETTERS (EARLY XV. CENT.)

specimens of this very ware.
Excavations at Bristol, not
many years since, resulted
in the discovery of a num-
ber of fragments from an
early fifteenth-century dish
of Hispano-Moresque lustre
and light blue. The design
is that of a convention-
alised tree of life between
two deer, without antlers.
Each of them stands on a
ledge ornamented with a
device similar to that which
encircles the shoulders and
base of the drug pot, Fig.
22, and which is believed
to be derived from Arabic
lettering. The component
pieces, thirty in number,
were found in a rubbish-
pit, which also contained
fragments of English pot-
tery ranging from the
Norman period to the six-
teenth century. The dish,
then, may be assumed to
have reached this country
not later than the sixteenth
century. It was exhibited

works of the needle, that, in the later middle
ages, was Hispano-Moresque lustre pottery among
fictiles. It was sought after and treasured through-
out the civilised world, more especially in Italy.
Thus is accounted for the large proportion of
specimens which not only bear Italian coats-of-
arms, showing them to have been produced for con-
temporary Italian families of wealth and position,
but display shields shaped in such peculiarly charac-
teristic fashions as imply no mere verbal blazoning,
but that actual drawings by Italian hands must
have been supplied to the Moorish executants.
Eustre ware was imported into this country in the
sixteenth century, if not earlier. King Rene of
Anjou in his private chapel had lavabo dishes of
“ terre de Valence ” (as the Inventory describes this
kind of pottery, because Valencia became the most
notable centre of its manufacture and export) ; and
seeing that Rene’s daughter, Margaret, became, by
her marriage with Henry VI., in 1445, queen-consort
of England, it is probable enough that she may have
brought over from her father’s court, at some time
or another during her thirty years’ residence here,

before the Society of Anti-
quaries at Burlington House, in April, 1901, and
is illustrated in their published Proceedings.

FIG. 6.—DISH, PALE COPPER LUSTRE AND DARK BLUE,
I3J IN. DIAMETER (VALENCIA, XV.—XVI. CENT.)

IS