Faience

The term is now used for a wide variety of pottery from several parts of the world, including many types of European painted wares, often produced as cheaper versions of porcelain styles.

From at least the 14th century, Málaga in Andalusia and later Valencia exported these "Hispano-Moresque wares", either directly or via the Balearic Islands to Italy and the rest of Europe.

"Majolica" and "maiolica" are garbled versions of "Maiorica",[2] the island of Majorca, which was a transshipping point for refined tin-glazed earthenwares shipped to Italy from the kingdom of Aragon at the close of the Middle Ages.

After about 1600, these lost their appeal to elite customers, and the quality of painting declined, with geometric designs and simple shapes replacing the complicated and sophisticated scenes of the best period.

Apothecary wares, including albarelli, can bear the names of their intended contents, generally in Latin and often so abbreviated to be unrecognizable to the untutored eye.

"English delftware" produced in Lambeth, London, and at other centres, from the late sixteenth century, provided apothecaries with jars for wet and dry drugs, among a wide range of wares.

Large painted dishes were produced for weddings and other special occasions, with crude decoration that later appealed to collectors of English folk art.

In Switzerland, Zunfthaus zur Meisen near Fraumünster church houses the porcelain and faience collection of the Swiss National Museum in Zürich.

Wares for apothecaries, including albarello, can bear the names of their intended contents, generally in Latin and often so abbreviated to be unrecognizable to the untutored eye.

The French industry was given a nearly fatal blow by a commercial treaty with Great Britain in 1786, much lobbied for by Josiah Wedgwood, which set the import duty on English earthenware at a nominal level.

[7] The coloured glazes majolica wares were later also made by Wedgwood and numerous smaller Staffordshire potteries round Burslem and Stoke-on-Trent.

At the end of the nineteenth century, William de Morgan re-discovered the technique of lustered faience "to an extraordinarily high standard".

[8] The term faience broadly encompassed finely glazed ceramic beads, figures and other small objects found in Egypt as early as 4000 BC, as well as in the Ancient Near East, the Indus Valley civilisation and Europe.

It was replaced by the much better creamware and other types of refined earthenware Staffordshire pottery developed in the 18th century, many of which did not need tin-glazes to achieve a white colour.