Moorish potteries producing lustred or non-lustred ware existed from an early date at Málaga, Valencia, Toledo, Calatayud, Murviedro, Murcia, and Barcelona. Another centre of this craft was probably Granada; for though she is not mentioned in this sense by any of the Moorish authors, the late Señor Contreras discovered here the vestiges of two ancient potteries, while one of the old entrances was known as Bab Alfajjarin, or “the potters' gate.”

XLVIII
DISH
(About A.D. 1000. Museum of Granada)

The Ordinances of Granada contain provisions which were evidently copied from the Spanish Moors, relating to the almadraveros or tilemakers, the tinajeros or makers of tinajas, and the olleros or potters generally. The Ordinances which concern the tilemakers are dated between 1528 and 1540. The restrictions imposed upon these craftsmen were irksome, foolish, and unnecessary. All bricks and tiles were to be stamped in three places with the city mark, and were only permitted to be made between the first of April and the thirty-first of October in each year, “since what is made at other seasons is not good or perfect, owing to the rain, and cold, and frost.”

Another Ordinance, illustrating the lawlessness prevailing at Granada in the times succeeding the reconquest, complains that “many persons, including labourers and hodmen, go forth into the roads and streets, and seize the tiles and bricks by violence from those who are conveying them, and bear them to their houses, or to the work which they are paid to do.”

A picturesque, though cheap and unluxurious, vessel of a thoroughly eastern character, and which was very largely manufactured by the Spanish Moors, is the terra-cotta tinaja or gigantic jar for storing wine, or olive oil, or grain (Plate [xlix].). The use of these receptacles extended through the whole Peninsula, and has continued undiminished to this day. The principal centres of tinaja-making were Toledo, Seville, and Granada. The Ordinances of the latter town embody Moorish rules relating to this branch of pottery. These laws, revived in 1526, provide that all tinajas must contain two kinds of earth, one red, the other white, thoroughly compounded in a trough of water. Before the potter removes the clay from the trough, he must call the city supervisor or veedor to look into the quality and mixing of the mass. The vessel as it leaves the oven must be white; otherwise, even although it have no flaw, the inspector is to break it. The potter is forbidden to coat his tinajas with a glaze composed of eggs, blood, chalk, and other strange ingredients; nor may he fire the glaze with torches, “because the smell of the smoke clings to the tinaja, and the wine or stum deposited therein grows redolent of it, and it stays within the jar perpetually.”

XLIX
HISPANO-MORESQUE TINAJA