CASE 3 LUSTREWARE FROM SPAIN

Tin-glazed pottery with metallic lustre, which had been practised across the Islamic world for centuries, reached a high point in the fourteenth century at Malaga, in the Nasrid kingdom of Andalusia, where a series of majestic lustred jars were made to decorate the Alhambra Palace in Granada. By 1400 the industry’s centre of gravity was moving up the east coast of Spain to the Christian kingdom of Valencia, especially to the town of Manises, near the port city of Valencia; the potters mostly remained of Islamic faith or descent.

Among the best clients of the Valencian potters were the rich merchant families of Tuscany; ambitious lustreware services with the arms of these families were ordered through Italian merchants operating in Spain. For the first time, Italians were introduced to the idea that pottery could be a beautiful domestic art-form, not simply functional, lowstatus crockery. These prestigious lustred imports came to be known to Italians as “maiolica ware,” apparently assimilating the Spanish phrase for lustre, obra de malica (Malaga ware) to the name “Maiolica” of the commercial entrepot of Majorca, not far offshore from Valencia. In due course the word “maiolica” came into wider use in Italy to describe any tin-glazed pottery, the sense it retains today.

In German (but not in English or French) the term Majolika has usually been taken to include Spanish lustreware as well as Italian wares. The two types have often been collected together.

Valencian lustreware is represented in this case by a magnificent basin with arms linked to the Spanish royal family, once in the Obizzi collection at Catajo near Padua.

Bibliography: Caiger-Smith 1973; González Martí 1944–1952; Ray 2000; Spallanzani 2006.

15

Lustreware basin

Spanish (Manises or Paterna), c1500 MAK, KHM 240

Source: KHM

Provenance: Obizzi-Este collection (E 8634)

Tin-glazed overall; painted in golden-brown lustre Ø 50.2; D 14.2 cm

Condition: broken and repaired, with some patches not in-painted. Conservation work at Universität für angewandte Kunst, Vienna, 2021/22

Bibliography: none

Deep basin, the sides and rim in moulded relief. Painted in lustre on the upper surface and sides with dense patterning including chain motifs, plant ornament, and lattice designs with small roundels. In the centre a shield of arms, Castile over Leon impaling a coat with diagonal stripes 1. The flat underside is decorated with fern scrolls. The arms are unidentified but probably indicate someone with a connection to the royal family of Spain2

1 Bendy of twelve in English heraldic terminology

2 A lustred plate with the same arms is in the Cloisters Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, no. 56.171.141.