Although it passed through a long period of prostration, embracing the greater part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at no time has the manufacture of decorative Spanish tiles succumbed completely. Of recent years it has revived surprisingly at Seville, Barcelona, and Segovia; and at the first of these cities the older azulejos, and particularly those in the cuenca style, are imitated to perfection.
In the cheapest kinds of modern tiling, such as is used for corridors and kitchens, a common device is a series of repeated curves and dots which evidently has its source in Arabic lettering. Indeed, the ornamental and attractive written characters of the Spanish Moors, rendered familiar to their rivals through long centuries of intercourse, seem to have constantly found favour with the Christian Spaniards. The fuero of Jaca, dated a.d. 1064, tells us that a Christian prince of Spain, Don Sancho Ramirez, was accustomed to write his signature in Arabic lettering. Meaningless inscriptions in the same language, and evidently executed by a Christian hand, are engraved on objects in the Royal Armoury; and Señor Osma describes in an interesting pamphlet (Los letreros ornamentales en la cerámica morisca del Siglo XV.) how, in the pottery of older Spain, a word in Arabic such as alafia (“prosperity” or “blessing”) would often be corrupted by Morisco craftsmen into a motive of a purely ornamental character, and which would only in this sense be comprehended and appreciated by the Christian.[79]
HISPANO-MORESQUE LUSTRED POTTERY
Probably no pottery in the world possesses greater loveliness or interest than the celebrated, yet even to this day mysterious, lustred ware of Moorish Spain. Our knowledge of the early history of this ware is still imperfect. In modern times, attention was first drawn to the lustre process by M. Riocreux, of the Sèvres Museum. In spite, however, of the subsequent monographs and researches of Davillier and other authorities, the origin of lustred pottery is yet a problem which awaits solution. Until some years ago it was believed to have had its source in Persia, where many specimens have been discovered in the form of tiles and other objects; but this belief was afterwards shaken by Fouquet, who unearthed at Fostat in Egypt, in the year 1884, specimens of lustred ware which are known to date from the eleventh century. Saladin, too, affirms that he has seen upon the mosque of Kairuan lustred plaques with inscriptions recording them to have been presented, between a.d. 864 and 875, by the emir Ibrahim Ahmed-ibn-el-Aglab.
Whatever these facts may signify, it appears from a statement by the geographer Edrisi that lustred ware was made in Spain as early as the twelfth century. “Here,” said the writer, speaking of Calatayud, “is produced the gold-coloured pottery which is exported to all countries.” The next allusion to it is by the traveller Ibn-Batutah, who visited certain parts of Spain in the middle of the fourteenth century. “At Málaga,” he wrote, “is made the beautiful golden pottery which is exported to the farthest countries.” These passages refer respectively to Aragon and Andalusia. The same ware was produced in Murcia. Ibn-Said, quoted by Al-Makkari, mentions the “glazed and gilded porcelain” of Murcia, Málaga, and Almería, calling it “strange and admirable.” It was also manufactured, probably in larger quantities than in any other part of Spain, in many towns and villages of the kingdom of Valencia, such as Carcer, Alaquaz, Moncada, Quarte, Villalonga, Traiguera, and Manises. In the Excellencies of the Kingdom of Valencia, written by Eximenes and published in 1499, we find it stated that “surpassing everything else is the ware of Manises, gilded and painted with such mastery that all the world is enamoured thereof, insomuch that the pope, the cardinals, and princes send for it, astonished that objects of such excellence can be made of earth.”[80]
Other writers on the same locality, such as Diago and Escolano, author of the Historia de la insigne y coronada ciudad y reino de Valencia (Valencia, 1610, 1611), confirm this eulogy of Eximenes. According to Escolano, Valencian ware was “of such loveliness that in return for that which the Italians send us from Pisa, we send them boatloads of it from Manises.” One of the most recent of authorities on lustred ware remarks that “in the fifteenth century ornamental vases in the (Spanish-Moorish) wares appear to have been commanded from Spain by wealthy Florentines, as is evident from the Medici arms and impresa in fig. 40; others bearing the Florentine lily (fig. 41) seem to have been ordered from the same city.” The illustrations to which the author of this monograph[81] refers, depict a vase and a boccale, both in lustred ware, and which it is extremely probable were manufactured at Manises.
The same ware was also possibly made in Cataluña, where pieces of it have been found among the ruins of the village of Las Casas. La Alhambra, a small magazine which is published at Granada, contains, in the number dated September 30th, 1901, an account of these fragments by their finder, Joaquín Vilaplana.
Some years ago the Balearic Islands were also thought to have produced this pottery. One of the earliest and most fervent champions of this theory, now definitely shown to be erroneous, was Baron Davillier. This gentleman, in some respects an excellent authority on Spanish ceramics, relied too strongly on certain assurances made him by a Señor Bover, and ended by declaring that in the museums of Paris and London he had himself seen lustred plates which bore the arms of Ynca in the Balearics, proving them to have been manufactured at that town.
However, a Majorcan archæologist, named Alvaro Campaner, refuted one by one Davillier's points of argument, and showed beyond all question that both the plates of Ynca and the arms which decorated them were simply nonexistent, and that the term Majolica, deriving from Majorica, applies to pottery in general, and not with any preference to lustred ware. Campaner also suggested very ingeniously that the word Majolica was probably applied by the Italians to Catalan or Valencian pottery conveyed to Italy in vessels themselves belonging to the Balearics, and which were in the habit of completing their cargoes in the ports of Barcelona and Valencia, and he added that this suggestion is supported by the fact that specimens of lustred ware are far more often met with on the Balearic coast than in the towns and villages of the interior. It is only fair to state that Davillier frankly and fully recognized the value of Campaner's refutation.
As to the methods of producing lustred pottery, the chemical investigations practised by Riocreux, Brogniart, Carand, and others, have shown that the metals used to produce the characteristic reflex which gives the ware its name were copper and silver, entering into the composition of an extremely thin glaze extended over the surface of the pottery, and employed, sometimes together, and sometimes separately. It is obvious that the lustre produced by copper would be deeper, redder, and less delicate than that produced by silver, while varying gradations would be obtainable by the mixture of both metals. It is also beyond doubt that the oldest specimens of this pottery extant to-day are those which contain the palest and most pearly lustre, and consequently the largest quantity of the costlier metal. In those of later date there is an evident inferiority, both in colour, lustre, and design. In fact, two separate, or nearly separate, epochs of this branch of Spanish pottery are pointed out by Señor Mélida, who gives the name of Mudejar to lustred objects manufactured at an earlier time by Moorish artists working in the cities captured by the Christians, and that of Morisco to the second or inferior class produced by Morisco craftsmen after the reconquest, and distinguished by the coarser and degenerate lustre, colouring, and draughtsmanship.