Delftware

Delftware

FaienceFaienceFaience is a type of pottery covered in a thick white tin glaze. Usually the glaze is decorated with motifs before being fired in the kiln for the last time. This type of pottery - unlike porcelain - is not pure white: the inside inner layer is brown or beige. The word 'faience' comes from Faenza, on of the Italian cities that specialised in this type of pottery in the 14th and 15th centuries. Faience is also called majolica, presumably a corruption of Majorca. It was through this island that the pottery was shipped. In the 17th century Delft became a major centre of painted faience production. Delftware was renowned as a skilful imitation of Chinese porcelain. (earthenware with opaque white tin glaze) was produced in Delft from the early seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth. It was actually a byproduct of an attempt to imitate Chinese pottery. Painted porcelain had been exported to Europe from China since around 1600 and Dutch potters had been trying unsuccessfully to produce a similar product. The factories in Delft discovered an alternative: tin-glazed earthenware, with blue or multicoloured designs in white glaze. It resembled Chinese porcelain, but was made of a completely different clayShardShards are peices of pottery - the material under the glaze or the decoration. The colour and structure of a shard is determined by the type of clay used. Various kinds of pottery can be distinguished from the shards. Porcelain has a brilliant white, somewhat transparent effect; earthenware is rougher, and coloured: brown or grey, yellow or red, depending on the clay and the firing technique. and was not translucent.