MAIOLICA.
CHAPTER I.
It is right, first, to explain that in this dissertation we shall make constant use of two or three words borrowed from foreign languages; one is botega or bottega, implying something between a workshop and an artist’s studio, which it would be difficult to express by a single English word: another is fabrique, meaning the private establishment of a master potter of that day, the idea of which cannot be so well conveyed by factory, pottery, or studio (itself an imported word), all of which are therein combined and modified.
The history of pottery and its manufacture is a subject of great extent; because from a very early period of human existence, known to us only by the tangible memorials of primitive inhabitants, the potter’s art appears to have been practised. At first the vessels were of coarse clay, rude and sun-dried or ill-baked, and occasionally ornamented with concentric and transverse scratches; from which state they gradually developed to the exquisite forms and decoration of the Greek pottery; but it would seem that however universal the production of vessels of baked clay, the art of applying to them a vitreous covering or glaze was an invention which emanated from the east, from India or Egypt, Assyria or Babylon.
On this point Dr. Birch, in the introduction to his erudite work on ancient pottery, says: “The desire of rendering terra-cotta less porous, and of producing vessels capable of retaining liquids, gave rise to the covering of it with a vitreous enamel or glaze. The invention of glass has hitherto been generally attributed to the Phœnicians; but opaque glasses or enamels as old as the eighteenth dynasty, and enamelled objects as early as the fourth, have been found in Egypt. The employment of copper to produce a brilliant blue coloured enamel was very early, both in Babylonia and Assyria; but the use of tin for a white enamel, as recently discovered in the enamelled bricks and vases of Babylonia and Assyria, anticipated, by many centuries, the re-discovery of that process in Europe in the fifteenth century, and shows the early application of metallic oxides. This invention apparently remained for many centuries a secret among the eastern nations only, enamelled terra-cotta and glass forming articles of commercial export from Egypt and Phœnicia to every part of the Mediterranean. Among the Egyptians and Assyrians enamelling was used more frequently than glazing, and their works are consequently a kind of fayence, consisting of a loose frit or body, to which an enamel adheres, after only a slight fusion. After the fall of the Roman empire the art of enamelling terra-cotta disappeared among the Arab and Moorish races, who had retained a traditional knowledge of the process. The application of a transparent vitreous coating or glaze over the entire surface, like the varnish of a picture, is also referable to a high antiquity, and was universally adopted, either to enhance the beauty of single colours or to promote the combination of many. Innumerable fragments and remains of glazed vases, fabricated by the Greeks and Romans, not only prove the early use of glazing, but also exhibit in the present day many of the noblest efforts of the potter’s art.”
It is true that on the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman pottery a subdued and hardly apparent glazing was applied to the surface of the pieces, but it is so slight as to leave a barely appreciable effect upon the eye, beyond that which might be produced by a mechanical polish, and so thinly laid on as almost to defy attempts at proving its nature by chemical investigation; it is, however, supposed to have been produced by a dilute aluminous soda glass, without any trace of lead in its composition, the greater portion of which was absorbed into the substance of the piece, thereby increasing its hardness and leaving only a faint polish on the surface of the ware.
In Egypt and the east the use of a distinct glaze (invetriatura of the Italians), covering the otherwise more porous substance of the vessel, appears to have been known and to have arrived at great perfection at a very remote period. It was in fact a superior ware, equivalent to the porcelain of our days, and from the technical excellence of some of the smaller pieces has been frequently, but wrongly, so called.