WHETHER one is a general collector or a collector of pottery and porcelain in particular, Italian maiolica will be found to be one of the most interesting of “lines,” historically as well as intrinsically. Pottery, both soft and hard, is distinct from porcelain, although the term “old china” is commonly used to embrace the whole field of ceramics—unfortunately, I think, as it is of importance to the collector to be precise in the matter of definitions.

Pottery, as distinguished from porcelain, is formed of potter’s clay with which an argillaceous and calcareous marl and sand have been mixed. The wares usually designated as earthenware are soft pottery. It may be scratched with a knife or file, and it is, generally speaking, fusible at porcelain furnace heat.

Soft pottery may be divided into four sorts: unglazed, lustrous, glazed, and enameled. The greater part of Egyptian, Greek Etruscan, Roman medieval and modern pottery is unglazed, lustrous, or glazed, while the centuries-later maiolica of Italy is of the fourth sort; that is, an enameled or stanniferous glazed ware, the art of making which was originally learned, we may suppose, from either Moorish potters of Majorca (one of the Balearic Islands) or perhaps from certain Persian sources.

Italian maiolica was originally called maiorica, a name which later gave way to maiolica, as the Tuscans more often wrote it that way, even when referring to the Island of Majorca, as one may guess from the rime of Dante, where is to be found reference to “Tra l’isola di Cipri È Maiolica.” The coarser ware of half-maiolica—mezza-maiolica—is not to be confused with the true maiolica, which is a tin-enameled pottery, lustred, although the term maiolica is generally used to designate the ware of both sorts.

The Italians ascribe to Luca della Robbia the discovery of the tin-glaze sometime prior to 1438. We have no dated piece of Florentine or Tuscan maiolica antedating 1477, and of this year but one dated example. The next earliest dates—1507 and 1509—appear on maiolica of the Cafaggiolo fabrique.

In the eighteenth century, as Chaffers tells us, Italian maiolica was called Raphael Ware, as it was believed, for a time, that Raphael himself had taken a hand at decorating some of it—an idea which quite naturally originated, as a great many designs from compositions by Raphael and other great masters appeared on maiolica ware. These, however, were copied from drawings and engravings. The best period of this pottery was subsequent to Raphael’s death, which took place in 1520.

A Cafaggiolo plate in the Victoria and Albert Museum possibly depicts Raphael and La Fornarina watching a maiolica-decorator at work, suggesting, I think, that had Raphael himself taken a hand at maiolica-painting that fact would have led the artist of the plate to show Raphael at such occupation instead of portraying him merely as an onlooker. Again, Raffaello dal Colle, who designed maiolica for the wife of Guidobaldo I, Duke of Urbino, may have been confused by early students with Raffaello Sanzio, the great Raphael.

Of the development of maiolica in Italy, Fortnum says: “In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries native wares were produced in various places, some of which still exist in the towers and faÇades of churches, and in the faÇade of a palace at Bologna. These are lead-glazed, rudely painted or with single colors, and in some instances ‘sgraffiato,’ proving that the use of a white ‘slip’ or ‘engobe’ was known in Italy at that period, as affirmed by Passeri, who further asserts that in 1300 the art assumed a more decorative character under the lords of Pesaro, the Malatestas. An even, opaque white surface having been obtained, the development of its artistic decoration steadily advanced. The colors used were yellow, green, blue, and black, to which we may add a dull brownish red, noticed in some of the Pisan ‘bacini.’ Passeri states that the reflection of the sun’s rays from the concave surfaces of these ‘bacini’ at Pesaro was most brilliant, and hence it has been wrongly inferred that they were enriched with metallic lustre.”

For many years after the discovery or at least the application of tin-glaze to pottery in Italy, large works were popular. But before the end of the first half of the sixteenth century this practice had lost its vogue. There was, on the other hand, an increased demand for the tiles, plates, etc., of the maiolica, an encouragement that led to the establishment of numerous maiolica potteries throughout northern and central Italy, Romagna and Tuscany leading, and Urbino and Pesaro rising to importance in the manufacture of this enameled ware. Both Pesaro and, later, Gubbio, had attained fame for the pearly, the golden, and the ruby lustre glaze given their wares, that of Gubbio proving the finest in this respect. Deruta has also laid claim to the introduction of the beautiful madreperla lustre. A few years ago the author visited this tiny, out-of-the-way village to inspect the botega of the modern maiolica-makers, and well recalls the ingenious arguments advanced by the gifted director in support of Deruta’s claim, which left one convinced until Pesaro savants in turn sought to appropriate the glory for their own town.

Fortnum says “the Piedmontese and Lombard cities do not appear to have encouraged the potter’s art to an equal extent in the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, and that neither can we learn of any excellence attained in Venice till the establishment of Deruta and Pesaro artists in that city in the middle of the latter period.” Fortnum says: “Perhaps commerce did for the Queen of the Adriatic by the importation of Rhodian, Damascus, and other eastern wares what native industry supplied to the pomp and luxury of the hill cities of Umbria; for it must be borne in mind that the finer sorts of enameled or glazed pottery, decorated by artistic hands, were attainable only by the richer class of purchasers, more modest wares or wooden trenchers and ancestral copper vessels contenting the middle class.” The art of maiolica flourished likewise in Ferrara, Rimini, and Ravenna. The Umbrian potters probably did not adopt the use of white stanniferous glaze before the close of the fifteenth century.

Federigo, who succeeded to the Duchy of Urbino in 1444, was a patron of the arts and a great collector. After his death, in 1482, his son Guidobaldo continued Federigo’s patronage of the ceramic art. The introduction of the maiolica enamel did not, happily, lead to the abandonment of the metallic colors and prismatic glazes of the earlier potters. Authorities are agreed that the retention of these metallic colors and prismatic glazes stimulated maiolica manufacture in other localities. The botega which Maestro Giorgio established in Gubbio at this period was probably the great center for the golden and ruby metallic lustre maiolica. In his handbook, “Maiolica,” Fortnum says: “Some technicality in the process of the manufacture, some local advantage, or some secret in the composition, almost a monopoly of its use was established at Gubbio, for we have the evidence of well-known examples that from the end of the first to the beginning of the last quarter of the fifteenth century many pieces painted by the artists of Pesaro, Urbino, and Castel Durante were taken there for the lustre embellishment.”

In Urbino the manufacture of maiolica reached its culminating point in 1540, in which year Orazio Fontana, Urbino’s greatest maiolica artist, entered the service of the duke. From 1580 Urbino maiolica declined.

There are exceptionally fine examples of early Italian maiolica in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in other public and private collections in America. These the collector may study to advantage. While the pieces of supreme importance, like the canvases of the old masters, are not to be had for a song, still, “finds” are possible, and even later pieces of maiolica are beautiful and fully worth while. Such pieces, too, with the interesting history of the earlier objects that inspired them, should appeal to the collector. Perhaps if Italian maiolica were more studied and understood in this country it would be more popular with collectors, but just because so few of them are versed in its evolution the advantage accrues to the collector who is wide awake enough to look about him in time. In passing it

should be noted that there is much—one may well say quantities—of modern maiolica to be found in the shops. Much of this is very beautiful, but the collector will soon have no trouble in distinguishing it from the old, even when the modern happens to reproduce the forms and designs of the early pieces.