Mr. Marryat remarks, in reference to the second or Moorish period, that the art of the new invaders had the same origin as the old, but as we have no specimens known to have been of the earlier or Arabian period we cannot accept this verdict as conclusive. Moreover, some confusion has arisen in classing together the glass glazed or siliceous pottery, with or without metallic lustre, and the Moresque wares produced in Spain, which are so distinctly characteristic as being enamelled with the oxide of tin.
We particularly refer to those somewhat rare examples of early siliceous pottery, like the deep Rhodian plate next engraved, some enriched with metallic lustre, others without, the designs upon all of which are eminently Arabian or Saracenic, unreadable mock Arabic inscriptions occurring (as in the textile fabrics of the same period) among the ornaments; as in the thirteenth century vase in the woodcut, p. [17]. Such are the tiles of early date from various
places in Persia and Arabia. Similar wares, of which there are specimens at South Kensington, are supposed to have been made by oriental potters in Sicily but it is difficult to say at what time. That island was conquered by the Saracens in 827. Again, there is another variety of pottery of Moresque character and ornamentation with vermicular pattern in copper lustre on a seemingly stanniferous glaze, which is ascribed to Moorish potters who went to Sicily and established works at Calata Girone in the fourteenth century.
It is not improbable that the existence in Spain of tin ores in considerable abundance may have accidentally led to the discovery or to the adoption of the stanniferous enamel, obtained by an admixture of the oxide of that metal with glass and oxide of lead. We have no positive proof of its use on pottery at an earlier date in any other country, since the period of the Babylonian bricks. May there not be some truth in the story of the Majorcan dishes built into the Pisan towers, and that the single specimen of “Persian” ware found by the writer on the church of Sta. Cecilia in that city, which in all probability was placed there early in the twelfth century, may be one of the dishes brought home by the Pisans, at a time anterior to the use of the tin enamel in Majorca?
There is generally a foundation for fabulous stories, and it is not unlikely that some few of those trophies were so applied; the more so as the taste for such architectural decoration prevailed at that period. At the same time there can be no doubt that many of the bacini adorning churches in various parts of Italy, including Pisa, were of native Italian manufacture, as would seem probable from their compositions and designs. Engravings of these, and of the fragment of oriental ware above alluded to, are published in the Archæologia, vol. xlii. We are indebted to the council of the Society of antiquaries for permission (see next page) to use the latter block.
The earliest traces of the use of stanniferous enamel glaze in Europe, known to us, is always in connection with a decoration, produced by the reduction of certain metallic salts in the reverberatory furnace, leaving a thin film upon the surface, which gives that beautiful and rich effect known as reflet métallique, nacré, cangiante, rubino, reverberato, &c., and in England as lustred ware. In Italy the use of a metallic lustre was apparently known and practised previous to the introduction of the tin enamel, for we have abundant examples of early “mezza-maiolica” from the potteries of Pesaro or Gubbio, glazed only with the oxide of lead and glass, and which are brilliantly lustred with the metallic colours. None of these can, however, be referred to an earlier date than the latter half of the fifteenth century.
Of whom, then, did the Italian potters learn this art? We have no answer to the question in any historical record, and we are forced to infer that the name by which this lustred ware was known at the time and in the country of its production, reflected that of