There can be little doubt that the maiolica and finer painted wares were looked upon at the time they were produced as objects of ornament or as services “de luxe.” The more ordinary wares or dozzinale were doubtless used for general domestic purposes in the houses of the higher classes, but the finer pieces decorated by better artists were highly prized. Thus we find that services were only made for royal or princely personages, frequently as presents. Some of the choicest specimens in our cabinets were single gift pieces; small plates and scodelle which it was then the fashion for gallants to present, filled with preserves or confetti to ladies. Many of these are of the form known as tondino, small, with a wide flat brim and sunk centre; in this the central medallion is generally occupied by a figure of Cupid, hearts tied by ribbon, or pierced by arrows; or by joined hands and similar amatory devices, or with a shield of arms and initial letters. The borders are painted with grotesques and trophies, among which sonnets and music sometimes occur, and medallions with love emblems, portraits, and armorial bearings. These amatorii pieces also occur as large plates and deep saucers, the surface of each entirely covered with a portrait of the beloved (as in the engraving p. [63]) accompanied by a ribbon or banderole, on which her name or a motto is inscribed, often with the complimentary accompaniment of “bella,” “diva,” “paragon di tutti,” &c. Jugs, vases, and other shaped pieces were also decorated in a similar style.
We find in maiolica all objects for table use: inkstands, ornamental vases, and quaint surprises; salt-cellars of curious forms; jugs of different size and model; many kinds of drug pots and flasks; pilgrims’ bottles, vasques, and cisterns; candelabra and candlesticks, rilievos and figures in the round; in short, every object capable of being produced in varied fancy by the potter’s art: even beads for necklaces, some of which are in the writer’s possession, decorated with knot work and concentric patterns and inscribed severally ANDREA · BELLA = MARGARITA · BELA = MEMENTO · MEI ·; these last, the only examples known, are finished with considerable care and are probably of the earlier years of the sixteenth century.
There is little doubt that many of the pieces ostensibly for table use were only intended and applied for decorative purposes (like the vase in the woodcut p. [131]), to enrich the shelves of the “credenza,” “dressoir,” or high-backed sideboard, intermingled with gold and silver plate, Venetian glass, &c. Such pieces were known as “piatti di pompa” or show plates, and among them are some of the most important and beautiful of the larger dishes and bacili, as well as the more elaborate and elegant of the shaped pieces.
CHAPTER VIII.
Persian, Damascus, and Rhodian Wares.
In a previous chapter we have traced the origin or parentage of this section of wares to the glazed pottery and artificial semi-porcelain of Egypt, and we have seen that in Assyria and at Babylon siliceous glazed tiles were used for wall decoration. Whether in Persia and in India a similar manufacture existed at that early period we have at present no exact knowledge, but we are told by the Count Julien de Rochchouart in his interesting “Souvenirs d’un voyage en Perse” that he possesses a brick glazed of dark blue colour, with cuneiform characters in white, which was found among the ruins of the ancient city of Kirman. The mosques of the 12th century in that country, particularly that at Natinz, are covered with glazed tiles of the most perfect workmanship and artistic excellence, with coloured and lustred decoration. Later examples—of the earlier years of the 17th century—specimens of which are in the Kensington museum are also beautiful, and the fashion, though in a degenerate form, is revived in that country at the present day. The piece of glazed pottery supposed to have been of ancient Hebrew origin and now preserved in the Louvre is also of this nature, and it is suggested by M. Jacquemart that the Israelites may have acquired the art in Egypt.
The varieties of pottery known under the names of Persian, Damascus, Rhodian, and Lindus wares, composing a large family, may be classified as siliceous or glass-glazed wares. The leading characteristics are—
1. A paste composed of a sandy and a white argillaceous earth, and some alkali or flux, greatly varying in their relative proportions, and producing degrees of fineness and hardness from a coarse sandy earthenware to a semi-vitrified translucent body, the latter being in fact a kind of porcelain of artificial paste.
2. A glaze formed as a true glass, of siliceous sand and an alkali (potash or soda), with the addition in some cases of a small quantity of oxide of lead or other flux.