Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/653

Rh SPANISH, ETC.] POTTERY 629 was made at Alcora, painted only in blues, often in the Chinese style. Some large vases of Moorish shape have very effective blue and white paintings of animals, flowers, and landscapes. 1 A quite different style of enamelled pot tery was made at Puente del Arzobispo in the 16th or 17th century. Specimens are rare ; they consist chiefly of plates decorated in a very skilful and effective way, somewhat after the fashion of Moorish wall-tiles, &quot; azulejos &quot; (see TILES). They are made of coarse red clay covered with white enamel, through which (before firing) the outline of the design was scratched down to the red body. The spaces between the incised lines were filled in with coloured enamels, rich blue, green, and orange, and the whole glazed with a very fusible lead glaze. The simple and mosaic-like patterns thus formed, either conventional flowers or heraldic animals, are extremely decorative and telling, iu- Portuguese. Little or no enamelled pottery of Portu- !;e - guese workmanship earlier in date than the 17th century is known to exist. Rato was one of the chief places for the manufacture of enamelled wares, which are coarsely painted, like the latest and poorest kinds of Italian ma jolica, and are not earlier in date than 1767, when the Rato potteries were first started. Other earlier specimens of unknown make also exist, and are marked with an &quot; R,&quot; like the Rato ware, to which they are very superior both in design and execution. The best are in blue and white only; many are marked with various dates during the 17th century. iiit Biscuit Pottery of Spain and Portugal. The earliest is&amp;gt; kinds now existing of Spanish pottery without either enamel or glaze are chiefly large wine-jars, &quot; tinajas,&quot; about 3 or 4 feet high, of graceful amphora-like shape, stamped with simple patterns in relief. Some of them date from the time of the Moorish occupation. Both Spain and Portugal have always been remarkable for the fineness and beauty of their potter s clays, and consequently have for long excelled in the production of simple biscuit wares, uncovered by either enamel or glaze. Very graceful pottery of this sort is manufactured even at the present day, the shapes being traditional, handed down from century to century with but little change, many vessels being still modelled after the old Roman forms. Some of this ware is of a white porous clay, like pipeclay, and some is of a fine red, close in texture, with slight sur face gloss, almost like the Roman &quot; Samian.&quot; One com mon kind is decorated in a very fanciful and ingenious fashion by the application of simple but rich surface orna ments, modelled by hand in relief, or applied in the state of semi-fluid slip. Other curious water-jars are made double, the outer vessel being pierced with patterns of open-work. A third variety has sparkling particles of quartz stuck on its surface while moist, a very old method of decoration, which was even practised by the potters of prehistoric times. On the whole, the modern biscuit wares of Spain and Portugal are among the most truly artistic and interest ing of any that are now made in Europe. It is still a living art, with simple beauty both in material and shape, not a laboured revival of a dead style, or dull copy of the artistic productions of a far-off time when fitness linked with grace came naturally to the humblest workman. SECTION XII. FRENCH FROM THE 16ra TO THE ISra CENTURY. During the 16th century two very different but equally remarkable sorts of pottery, decorated with great elabora tion, were made in France. One was that invented and manufactured by Bernard Palissy, which was a fine earthen ware, usually modelled in relief, covered with a white ^^namej,_and_jjainted with many bright colours (see See Riano, Spanish Handbook, South Kensington. Museum, 1879T PALISSY). The other, Oiron pottery, popularly called Oiron &quot; faience Henri deux,&quot; is very different both in design and pottery, execution. This rare and curious ware, of which only about forty pieces are known, was made by a potter called Fran- Qois Cherpentier for his patron, a rich and artistic widow lady, named Helene de Hangest, who established a work shop and kiln at her Chateau d Oiron, in the province of Thouars, between the years 1524 and 1537. The manufac ture was carried on by Helene de Hangest s son for some years after her death, but the pieces then produced are inferior in quality, and soon ceased to be made at all. This ware is not enamelled ; it is simply a fine white pipeclay, to which a delicate cream-tint is given by a very slight tinge of yellow in the lead glaze. Its forms are very elabor ate, sometimes extremely graceful, but occasionally too fanciful, and overloaded with ornament. It consists of plates, tazze, holy-water pots, ewers, salt-cellars, and other varieties of shape, generally forms more suited to metal than to clay, ornamented with very graceful interlaced strap-work and arabesques, such as were much used by the great Augsburg and Nuremberg workers in silver. The method in which many of the ornaments are executed is the chief peculiarity of the ware : they are first incised or stamped into the soft clay of the vessel, and then the sunk patterns are filled up with different clay pastes, tinted with dark brown, soft yellow, or buff. Many of the delicate leaf- ornaments appear to have been formed with a metal stamp ; some are exactly the same as those used by contemporary bookbinders. The ornaments are not all done in this labo rious manner ; some are simply painted under the glaze, especi ally on the later productions of Oiron. Monograms and em blems occur frequently, the sala mander of Francis I.,the &quot;H. D.&quot; for Henri deux, the royal inter laced crescents, or coats of arms (see No. 15). Fig. 61 shows a beautiful covered tazza in the Louvre, made during the reign of Francis I. There are eleven piecesof this ware in the Louvre ; the Kensington Museum has five ; but the greater number of known specimens are in the possession of members of the Rothschildfamily. It was at one time thought to be the production of a pottery under the patronage of Henry II., and hence the name by which it was formerly known ; but its real origin was established Potter s mark. No. 15. FIG. 61. Tazza of Oiron pottery. (Louvre.) from clear documentary evidence published in M. Fillon s valuable monograph on the subject. Throughout the period we are now considering enamelled pottery Nevers was produced at a very large number of French towns, often with enamel- the help of potters from Italy ; and the introduction of the tin led enamel soon superseded the earlier sort of ware with a bright green pottery. or blue glaze, which at the end of the loth and beginning of the 16th century was the chief and most artistic kind of pottery that was made in France. The change was not wholly a gain, as pieces of the older ware were moulded in relief with designs of great beauty