Faience

Modern bowl in a traditional pattern, made in Faenza, Italy, which gave its name to the type.

Faience pottery is tin-glazed pottery. It is the use of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration. This is got by adding an oxide of tin to a lead glaze.

It was a major advance in the history of pottery, made about 500 years ago. The technique was brought to Al-Andalus in Spain from Moorish potteries in the eastern Mediterranean.

In Italy locally produced tin-glazed earthenwares was called maiolica. It reached a peak in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

It was made in several countries. English creamware was developed in Staffordshire in the 18th century. Instead of faience they were called delftware.

Faience Media

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  Sophisticated Rococo Niderviller faience, by a French factory that also made porcelain, 1760–65

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

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  Rococo tureen, Marseille, c. 1770

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  Faïence de Lunéville & Saint-Clément

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

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  Egyptian pendant of lions or Apis Bull. The Walters Art Museum.

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

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  Faience from Laterza, Italy