Faience

Faience or fa�ence is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed earthenware on a delicate pale buff body.

History of faience

The name is simply the French name for Faenza, in the Romagna near Ravenna, Italy, where a painted ware on a clean, opaque pure-white ground, called majolica, was produced for export as early as the fifteenth century. A kiln capable of producing high temperatures exceeding 1000� C was required to achieve this result (see pottery).

"Majolica" (pronounced and also spelled "maiolica") is a garbled version of "Maiorica", for the island of Majorca, which was a transshipping point for refined tin-glazed earthenwares shipped to Italy from the kingdom of Aragon in Spain at the close of the Middle Ages. This type of Spanish pottery owed much to its Moorish inheritance.

However the tin-glazed earthenware of the European 15th century is in fact inferior in strength and durability to the faience that was produced in ancient Egypt as early as 3500 BC ([1] (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1026/is_n3_v154/ai_21146424)). Egyptian faience was not made of clay but rather of a ceramic composed primarily of quartz. Approximately two hundred of these "masterpieces of faience" are the subject of the on-line article posted at [2] (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1026/is_n3_v154/ai_21146424).

European Faience

The first northerners to imitate the tin-glazed earthenwares being imported from Italy were the Dutch. Delftware is a kind of faience, made at potteries round Delft in Holland, characteristically decorated in blue on white, in imitation of the blue-and-white porcelain that was imported from China in the early sixteenth century, but it quickly developed its own recognisably Dutch d�cor.

Dutch potters in northern (and Protestant) Germany established German centres of faience: the first manufactories in Germany were opened at Hanau (1661) and Heusenstamm (1662), soon moved to nearby Frankfurt-am-Main.

In France, centres of faience manufacturing developed from the early eighteenth century led in 1690 by Quimper in Brittany [3] (http://www.faience-de-quimper.com/histquim_en.html), which today possesses an interesting museum devoted to faience, and followed by Rouen and Strasbourg,

The term "faience" has been extended to include finely-glazed ceramic beads found in the Indus Valley Civilization.

The products of faience manufactories, rarely marked, are identified by the usual methods of ceramic connoisseurship: the character of the body, the character and palette of the glaze, and the style of decoration, Faience blanche being left in its undecorated fired white slip. Faience parlante bears mottoes often on decorate labels or banners. Wares for apothecary use bear the names of their intended contents, generally in Latin and often so abbreviated to be unrecognizable to the untutored eye. Mottoes of fellowships and associations became popular in the 18th century, leading to the Faience patriotique that was a specialty of the years of the French Revolution.

In the course of the later 18th century, cheap porcelain took over the market for refined faience, and fine stoneware in the early 19th century, fired so hot the unglazed body vitrifies, closed the last of the traditional makers' ateliers even for beer steins. At the low end of the market, local manufactories continued to supply regional markets with coarse and simple wares.

Faience revival

In the 1870s, the Aesthetic movement, notably in Britain, rediscovered the robust charm of faience, and the large porcelain manufactories marketed revived faience, such as the "Majolica ware" of Minton and of Wedgwood.

Many centres of traditional manufacture are recognized, even some individual ateliers. A partial list follows.