[Sca-cooks] Re: heraldry & ceramics (morgana.abbey at juno.com)

[Louise Smithson]

Morgana wrote: A friend of mine has a 14th century French persona. She is curious if heraldry was put on tableware and if so, how was it placed? Did they underglaze it on the rim of the plates, put it underneath? Did they do that tacky Nancy Reagan-White House china thing? Any ideas?

Morgana, I have seen arms on at least plates but it is on Italian Majolica from the 15th and 16th century.  There are lots of pictures of Majolica on the web all you have to do is google.  The Italians were inspired by the spanish. The spanish decorated ceramics is called hispano-moresque ware (and occured a little ealier).  The spanish in turn stole this technique from the arabs, early arabic tin ware.  

The one thing that all these ceramics have in common is that the background is a white tin glaze, which is then painted on with stains and chemicals, this is then fired and the colors become brilliant on a smooth white background.  The process is technically very difficult, consequently pieces were expensive and in period these decorated plates were ostentatious displays of wealth.  Many of the examples in the museums worldwide show no sign of use whatsoever.  They were too expensive to eat off, they were displayed in wooden cases.  .

In addition the 14th century is just too early for most of this ware, it had not spread to Europe yet, and the arabic ceramics were much more abstract.    I don't have too many books on the pottery from france for the 14th century but I know that they were responsible for importing cooking pots into england for sale there as well as the ever popular Rouen drinking jugs. See the museum of london for some examples of imported ceramics. 
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/pages/object.asp?obj_id=34537
Fairly common to france was slip decorated ware.  White or cream/grey clay body, colored slips in a pattern on the outside and finally a clear lead glaze.  

Hope this helps, but what she wants isn't really appropriate to persona or period.  Sorry.

Helewyse 
Cook and potter :-)




		
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