DOI article:
Rackham, Bernard: Domestic pottery of the past
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.41869#0015
DOMESTIC POTTERY OF THE
PAST. ^ BY BERNARD RACKHAM
F the crafts that minister to the needs of our daily life
few offer more varied possibilities of decorative treat-
ment than that of the potter. The mere shaping of a pot
on the wheel provides endless scope for the creation of
beauty in subtle curves and pleasantly contrasted light
and shade. When the potter wishes by adding ornament
to the shape to give it stronger accent or livelier interest
the means within his reach are almost inexhaustible. The graving tool, the
mould and the stamp, the painter’s brush, the stencil, can all be enlisted,
even also the printing-press if used with judgment and restraint. If chro-
matic effect be aimed at, much can be done with the clay alone, whilst
glaze may be made the vehicle of colouring materials with which, by the
wizardry of the furnace, every hue of the rainbow can be obtained.
In the ancient world the ceramic art was amongst the foremost in honour,
but when the night of barbarism which overwhelmed Roman civilisation
had passed, it was the last of the great crafts to be restored to dignity. Its
revival in medieval Spain belongs strictly to the history of Oriental culture.
Modern Western culture had gone far on its course before vessels of clay
were deemed worthy of any but the rudest fashioning or the humblest uses.
Pottery first began to rank again amongst the artistic crafts of Europe in
Italy, in the 14th century. Before that time only the simplest useful wares
were created on the potter’s wheel—pitchers and jars for the fountain or
the cellar and kitchen crockery owing to chance, not to design, any come-
liness they possessed.
It is therefore with Italian maiolica that I propose to begin this short survey.
Its distinctive feature is the coating of opaque white tin enamel laid over
the coarse yellow clay as a surface for painted decoration. In ceramic
painting, as in the greater achievements of fresco and altar-piece, the
Italians were without a peer in Europe. They were hardly outrivalled by
the potters of the East. Fully to appreciate painted maiolica it must be
borne in mind that the artist had to work on the unfired glaze, that is, on
an absorbent surface very different from that of a glaze already fired.
Indeed the art of underglaze painting or painting on the raw stanniferous
glaze before its fusion in the kiln demands such sureness of hand, such self-
mastery and confidence as would be beyond the reach of most modern
china-decorators, accustomed to working in enamel pigments applied over
the already-fired glaze.
The earliest maiolica was very restricted in its range of colours. At first
two only were used, manganese-purple for drawing the outline and copper-
green for filling in minor details. This stage we see in the simple pitchers
1
PAST. ^ BY BERNARD RACKHAM
F the crafts that minister to the needs of our daily life
few offer more varied possibilities of decorative treat-
ment than that of the potter. The mere shaping of a pot
on the wheel provides endless scope for the creation of
beauty in subtle curves and pleasantly contrasted light
and shade. When the potter wishes by adding ornament
to the shape to give it stronger accent or livelier interest
the means within his reach are almost inexhaustible. The graving tool, the
mould and the stamp, the painter’s brush, the stencil, can all be enlisted,
even also the printing-press if used with judgment and restraint. If chro-
matic effect be aimed at, much can be done with the clay alone, whilst
glaze may be made the vehicle of colouring materials with which, by the
wizardry of the furnace, every hue of the rainbow can be obtained.
In the ancient world the ceramic art was amongst the foremost in honour,
but when the night of barbarism which overwhelmed Roman civilisation
had passed, it was the last of the great crafts to be restored to dignity. Its
revival in medieval Spain belongs strictly to the history of Oriental culture.
Modern Western culture had gone far on its course before vessels of clay
were deemed worthy of any but the rudest fashioning or the humblest uses.
Pottery first began to rank again amongst the artistic crafts of Europe in
Italy, in the 14th century. Before that time only the simplest useful wares
were created on the potter’s wheel—pitchers and jars for the fountain or
the cellar and kitchen crockery owing to chance, not to design, any come-
liness they possessed.
It is therefore with Italian maiolica that I propose to begin this short survey.
Its distinctive feature is the coating of opaque white tin enamel laid over
the coarse yellow clay as a surface for painted decoration. In ceramic
painting, as in the greater achievements of fresco and altar-piece, the
Italians were without a peer in Europe. They were hardly outrivalled by
the potters of the East. Fully to appreciate painted maiolica it must be
borne in mind that the artist had to work on the unfired glaze, that is, on
an absorbent surface very different from that of a glaze already fired.
Indeed the art of underglaze painting or painting on the raw stanniferous
glaze before its fusion in the kiln demands such sureness of hand, such self-
mastery and confidence as would be beyond the reach of most modern
china-decorators, accustomed to working in enamel pigments applied over
the already-fired glaze.
The earliest maiolica was very restricted in its range of colours. At first
two only were used, manganese-purple for drawing the outline and copper-
green for filling in minor details. This stage we see in the simple pitchers
1