Faience/Majolica
Object by Sonngard Marcks.
A painting ground for fine paintings.
This genre of pottery grew out of a desire to copy the brilliant white porcelain that could not be made in Europe until the 18th century because of a lack of kaolin. Faience, and also majolica, has a yellowish-gray or light reddish-brown porous body (a term for a fired ceramic mass) which, to cover the color of the clay, is coated with a white-covering and tin-tin glaze. The raw glaze subsequently provides the painting ground for colorful and delicate paintings using ceramic paints and metal oxides. The low firing temperature (1000 - 1100) allows a wide range of colours.