Affordable Italian Majolica

 

QUESTION: Recently, I’ve fallen in love with Italian majolica pottery. While some consider it garish, I find the colorful motifs uplifting. The prices I’ve seen for it online seem to be all over the place. But there are some lovely pieces available for around $50. Is this a good item to collect? The styles also seem quite varied. Can you tell me more about its history and about some of the styles?

ANSWER: Compared to English majolica, the Italian versions, for the most part, are still relatively low in price, so therefore, affordable. And as with any other antique or collectible, you should collect what you like, regardless of what other people think. Italian majolica of one sort or another is still being produced from Tuscany in the north to Sicily in the south. 

Even though the English Victorians displayed the bright colors and fanciful shapes of majolica pottery to give the appearance of wealth, no one made majolica like the Italians.  

So what exactly is majolica ware? Majolica is a soft and porous earthenware with molded designs that artists hand decorate in brilliant colors. It has a thick coat of clear metallic glaze made up of metallic oxides added to clear lead sulfates which produces its vivid colors.

This type of pottery originated over 2,000 years ago in North Africa, where potters introduced the technique of adding an opaque tin glaze to baked clay. During the 8th century, when the Moors joined together to conquer Spain, they brought the secrets of majolica with them.

During the Renaissance, Spaniards exported their version of tin-glazed pottery to Italy from Majorca, an island shipping port in the Mediterranean. The Italians called the colorful pottery “majolica,” as this was how they spelled the Spanish island's name.

From the late 13th century, potters in central Italy, especially in and around Florence, refined production of tin-glazed earthenware. But it wasn’t until the 15th-century that potters began to appreciate the full artistic potential of majolica. Famous 15th-century sculptor Luca della Robbia wanted to add color to his creations, and the new material was perfect. He and his family became renowned for creating large wreaths of naturalistic majolica fruit. The success of their wares encouraged the production of majolica in both Arezzo and Siena.

But by the second half of the 15th century, Florence had lost its pre-eminence as a center of majolica production, and its manufacture scattered out among small communes..

Potters from Montelupo set up the potteries at Cafaggiolo. In 1490, twenty-three master potters of Montelupo agreed to sell the year's production to Francesco Antinori of Florence. Montelupo provided the experienced potters who the Medici family set up in 1495 at the Villa Medicea di Cafaggiolo.

In the 16th century, potters began to produce majolica at Castel Durante, Urbino, Gubbio, and Pesaro. The early 16th century witnessed the development of istoriato wares on which artists painted historical and mythical scenes in great detail. And by the end of the 16th century, potters in Venice, Padua, and Turin and as far south as  Palermo and Caltagirone in Sicily began producing majolica.

The variety of majolica styles that arose in the 16th century defies classification. Dozens of styles emerged with even more sub-groups, each with its own shapes and decorative motifs. Italian city states encouraged the pottery industry by offering tax relief, citizenship, monopoly rights, and protection from outside imports.

Cipriano Piccolpasso compiled an important mid-16th century document that discussed  the techniques of majolica painting. He noted the work of individual 16th-century masters like Nicola da Urbino, Francesco Xanto Avelli, Guido Durantino and Orazio Fontana of Urbino, Mastro Giorgio of Gubbio and Maestro Domenigo of Venice.

During the 18th century, majolica wares came under increasing competition from porcelain manufacturers. To  face this competition, majolica potters introduced the process of third firing, called  piccolo fuoco in the mid-18th century. After the traditional two firings at 1750°F, potters painted the vitrified glaze with colors that would have degraded at such high temperatures, then fired the pieces a third time at a lower temperature, about 1100 to 1200°F. Potters introduced new vibrant colors, particularly red and various shades of pink obtained from gold chloride. 

Historians believe that one of the first to introduce this technique in Italy was Ferretti in Lodi, in northern Italy. Lodi majolica had already reached high quality in the second quarter of the 18th century. With the introduction of the third firing technique and increasing interest in botany and scientific observation, potters developed a refined production of majolica decorated with naturalistic flowers.

The Ginori family founded a factory to produce majolica in Milan in 1735. The company's head chemist, Giusto Giusti, began experimenting with traditional majolica techniques in the 1840s, and the company began producing outstanding examples of Victorian majolica in the 1850s.

Ginori made monumental display vases and wall plaques to decorate the halls and stairwells of middle class Victorian homes. The company's 's specialty was its “grotesque” decoration. Taken from ancient Roman art, the bizarre creatures were a combination of animal, human and plant forms. Ginori was a very successful majolica producer and enjoyed royal patronage. Most majolica items made by the firm are marked with a crown above the word "GINORI. ".

Ulisse Cantagalli of Florence was another large producer of 19th-century Italian majolica. From the 1870s until 1901, Cantagalli produced a tremendous amount of majolica to be sold at moderate prices. A company catalog dated 1895 lists almost 1,100 majolica pieces. Catagalli's early wares were replicas of the reliefs by della Robbia. His luster glazes showed a strong Spanish-Moorish influence. The company’s pieces bear the mark "CANTAGAL FIRENCE" and an encircled rooster seal.

Production of Italian majolica wares continues today, mainly in reproductions of the historical style. Contemporary majolica looks different from old majolica because its glaze is usually made more opaque with cheaper zircon rather than tin. However, some potteries specialize in making authentic looking Renaissance-style pieces with genuine tin glaze.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Advertising of the Past" in the 2023 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

The Delight of Bristol Blue

 

QUESTION: I recently purchased a piece of what was described as “Bristol Blue” glass through an online antiques auction. I collect antique glass but this vase struck me as something unique. Although it looked like Victorian enameled glass, it resembled porcelain and the description said it was made in England in the late 18th century. I would really like to know more about this piece. I didn’t think glassmakers produced enameled glass that early Was it produced in Bristol, England, and thus the name, and who made it? And just how far back does Bristol Blue glass go?

ANSWER: Those are all very good questions. Let’s begin with the name. Even though this type of glass has Bristol in its name, glassmakers throughout most of England produced it. The blue in the name refers to the coloring used in the glass.

In the first half of the 18th century, near Redcliffel Backs, Temple Meads, Bedminster and other suburbs of Bristol, England, the squat chimneys of glasshouses and potteries silhouetted the landscape like giant beehives. But it was the age of porcelain, and anyone who could afford to buy it did so. Porcelain factories enjoyed the protection of kings, and European elite emptied their purses for priceless porcelain treasures. The arrival of an affordable substitute in decorated rnilch glass from Germany delighted Bristol glassmakers. For the first time, they had a perfect porcelain substitute  within their reach. 

The Venetians first made glass as an imitation of porcelain prior to 1500. Experts believe they used tin oxide as the agent to produce the white opacity in their glass. Eighteenth-century English white glass, called enamel glass in advertisements of the 1760s, was an intensely white, brittle material, generally a potash-lead mix, rendered opaque by the addition of lead arsenate. The porcelain-like, opaque glass  produced by the glassmakers of Bristol, was soft and smooth to the touch yet retained the fine heaviness of English crystal. It was an instant success, forcing the Bristol glassmen to borrow decorators from neigh-boring potteries to keep up with the public's demand.

England's glass excise tax of 1746 raised the duty on clear glass but didn’t tax opaque and colored glass because there was so little of it being made. This offered an excellent economic incentive for its increased production.

Chemists long knew that a powdered coloring could be premixed and supplied to glassmakers for addition to clear glass of their own making. But it was 18th-century German chemists from Saxony, who refined impure oxide of cobalt to produce a blue powder of unparalleled purity and uniform consistency. They exported their product, called “smalt,” to England, where a British merchant distributed it under the name "Bristol Blue."

The Bristol glassmakers quickly added the new deep-blue color to their already successful line of opaque white glass. Vigor & Stevens, of Thomas Street and Lazarus Jacobs, and later his son Isaac, of Temple Street, produced pieces primarily in deep Bristol Blue.

By the end of the 18th century the manufacture of blue glass became fairly common throughout England and continued to be marketed under the name of Bristol Blue. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to identify glass made in Bristol from a piece manufactured elsewhere. The original term “Bristol Blue" referred simply to the coloring agent sold to glassmakers rather than to their finished products.

The early shapes, manufactured around 1770, emulated Chinese and English porcelain—pear-shaped covered vases, trumpet-mouthed beakers, and cruets—all   produced in sets. Glassmakers also produced scent or smelling bottles and snuff boxes, often facet-cut, with enameling and gilding, in both white and blue glass.

Early Chinese porcelain painters greatly influenced the 18th-century Bristol designs. The Chinese artists working at the Imperial Porcelain Factory excelled in delicate miniature enameled decoration on their opaque white glass. They often employed motifs of figures, birds, and European flowers much admired by the Emperor Chi’en Lung, who ruled from 1736 to 1795. Since most English glasshouses made their opaque white glass in competition with porcelain, most used the same styles and even the same artists to decorate both.

Glass decorator Michael Edkins linked the white and blue glass under the mutual name of "Bristol." At first, he apprenticed to an enameling firm in Birmingham, England, but at the age of 20, he took up residence in Bristol and settled down to decorate pottery dishes and tiles. At that time, artists painted the pieces with pencils made of bristles from the noses and eyelids of oxen. Graduating to glass, Edkins began decorating "enamel and blue glassware." He worked both independently and for Isaac Jacobs, Little & Longman, and Williams, Dunbar & Company from 1782 onwards. Instead of using enamel paints that needed to be fired, Edkins used standard oil colors, or plain gold gilt motifs, applied with unfired varnish, which he called "cold" decoration. 

Generally, artists decorated Bristol Blue ware with unfired or lightly fired gold varnish. Cruets and decanters often sported the name of their contents as well as intricate garlands and wreaths of plain gold. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Ancients" in the 2021 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.