Linda Arbuckle on fri 14 aug 98
John,
Tin-glazed eartheware began in the Middle East, travelled with the
Moslems across north Africa and across Gibralter into Spain. Spanish
potters did a great job with it. Italians imported a lot of it thru
Majorca. One story about the term is that it came from the name of the
port, Majorca. It isn't called majolica or maiolica until the Italians
do it.
Overlapping terms have caused confusion. The anecdotal story I heard is
that the molded relief wares (like the pineapple-shaped teapot) that
were made in factories, notabley in England in the 19th c, and finished
with transparent colored lead glazes reminded someone of Italian
majolica, so people began to refer to the transparent lead glazed wares
also as majolica.
People have tried to make it a nice, tidy classification. In her book
Tin-glazed Earthenware, Daphne Carnegy says that majolica is the
lead-glazed ware, maiolica is the Italian tin-glazed ware. But the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many others, refers to the Italian
tin-glazed ware as majolica. So, I say it's your pick, majolica or
maiolica. If you believe the Majorca story, then you'd probably go with
the J.
And like faience, the term majolica can refer to tin-glazed ware, or the
technically unrelated colored transparent lead-glazed wares.
Contemporary usage seems to have appropriated majolica/maiolica as a
term for tin-glazed ware, altho perhaps purists might say it's only the
Italian wares, as Delft is the Dutch version.
Life is messy.
Linda
--
Linda Arbuckle
Graduate Coordinator, Assoc. Prof.
Univ of FL
School of Art and Art History
P.O. Box 115801, Gainesville, FL 32611-5801
(352) 392-0201 x 219
e-mail: arbuck@ufl.edu
Laurel Carey on sat 15 aug 98
Linda Arbuckle wrote:
>
(snip)
> tin-glazed ware as majolica. So, I say it's your pick, majolica or
> maiolica. If you believe the Majorca story, then you'd probably go with
> the J.
>
i always thought it was just a problem with pronunciation. the majorca
story is just fine, but some people did not know that despite the "j",
this island is *pronounced*: maiorca. then some people started
spelling it the way it sounded, and thus you get 2 variations.
i live in western north carolina where a similar thing has happened with
furniture. a bedroom suite is pronounced "suit". some people now spell
it without the "e". well, why not, then the pronunciation matches the
spelling at least. ;-)
laurel
lacarey@ioa.com
asheville, nc, usa
vince pitelka on tue 5 nov 02
Rene -
There are some odd assumptions in your message. When the tin-glaze
tradition of Hispano-Moresque ceramics traveled to Italy in the late Gothic
era, it came via the island of Majorca (or the Spanish spelling, Mallorca),
a major trade center off the coast of Spain. The "Italianized" pronouncing
of Majorca can be phonetically spelled "Maiolica," and thus the wares which
grew from the Hispano-Moresque precedent (not wares made on Majorca) were
thus called. Needless to say, no one wrote the word down until a lot later.
Minton may have been the first to use the anglicized majolica with a hard
"j" in a commercial line of work in the 19th century, but it is apparent
that a lot of late English Baroque wares were referred to as majolica, as a
bastardization of maiolica. Similarly, the word "faience" for tin-glazed
wares in France is a French interpretation of "Faenza," dating to the
Renaissance when the tin-glaze technology traveled north through Europe via
that north-Italian city.
One thing is clear. When referring to the Italian tin-glaze redware with
imagery painted on the raw glaze surface, made from the late Gothic era to
the present, the word can be spelled Maiolica or Majolica, but should be
pronounced with a soft "j." When referring to the English work appearing in
the 18th century and later, the word should be pronounced with a hard "j."
And to be really picky, there is nothing "painterly" about Italian maiolica.
It is fairly rigid and linear.
Best wishes -
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Crafts
Tennessee Technological University
1560 Craft Center Drive, Smithville TN 37166
Home - vpitelka@dtccom.net
615/597-5376
Work - wpitelka@tntech.edu
615/597-6801 ext. 111, fax 615/597-6803
http://www.craftcenter.tntech.edu/
Snail Scott on wed 6 nov 02
At 06:16 PM 11/5/02 -0600, Vince wrote:
>...there is nothing "painterly" about Italian maiolica.
>It is fairly rigid and linear...
Although the designs are laid out rather formally,
the color application is often quite loose and (I
would say) 'painterly'. It's fair to call this a
misuse of the term, since paintings of the era did
not aspire to a similar aesthetic. (Indeed, it's
not quite proper to call the imprecise workmanship
on relatively low-end merchandise an 'aesthetic',
either.) It ain't van Gogh, but I think 'painterly'
is a term that might still be applied here with
some validity.
-Snail
p.s. 'painterly' is a term that is generally taken
to mean a result that shows the brushwork and its
result in a fairly 'exposed' way, with brushmarks
and irregular pigment application. In spite of
the common-sense assumptions of any lay English
speaker, it doesn't just meant 'like a painter',
and many wonderful paintings throughout history
(maybe most of them) would not be described by art
writers as 'painterly'. It doesn't imply that the
painting isn't fabulous; that's just how this word
is used in art criticism.
-S.
Cavalier Lisle Art & Design on thu 7 nov 02
>And to be really picky, there is nothing "painterly" about Italian maiolica.
>It is fairly rigid and linear.
>Best wishes -
>- Vince
Well, if you're going to be really picky Vince, then I have to pick
up this thread and disagree with your last statement.
Although many hand painted Italian Maiolica designs incorporate
linear and geometric patterns, they are done with the flourish of a
talented hand which shows in the mark making. And the majority of the
"classic" renaissance maiolica platters, chargers, flasks, etc.
incorporate figures and landscape paintings which rival any of the
oil and fresco paintings of the same period.
IMHO,
Marc Lisle
A disappointed Democrat who woke up to rain and bad news in Boston.
Cavalier Lisle Art & Design
http://www.cavalierlisle.com
mailto:clad@rcn.com
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