majolica

Majolica was produced for the first time by Messrs. Minton, in 1850, and they have been for many years the only producers of this article. The name of majolica is now applied indiscriminately to all fancy articles of coloured pottery. When, however, it is decorated by means of coloured glazes, if these are transparent, it ought to be called Palissy ware […]

[…] the coloured glaze decorated wares which we now call majolica, but which Minton referred to as Palissy wares.

Majolica is the term used to describe pottery made of an earthenware body coated with semi-translucent coloured lead glazes. It was developed at the Minton factory in the late 1840s by Léon Arnoux, who had come to the Potteries in 1848.

The word Majolica, or Maiolica […] was applied to all Stanniferous faience of Italy and Spain.

Minton did not use the word maiolica themselves, relying instead on the Victorian version, majolica, which they used to mean wares of Renaissance inspiration, featuring hand painting on an opaque white glaze. […].

2013, S. De la Vega, A. Castaneda-Gomez del Campo, M. Jimenez-Reyes, A. Tellez-Nieto, D. Tenorio, Majolica ware in the New Spain: an evaluation through NAA. The results of a study about [Tin-glaze] Majolica ceramics recovered from three sites located in Mexico City, Akademiai Kiado´, Budapest, Hungary The [tin-glaze] Majolica manufacture process has remained practically unchanged through time: shaping is done with a potter’s wheel; drying must be slow... two firings... the first one for biscuit-sintering and the second for the glaze used as a surface for decoration... Glaze is prepared with a mixture of glass-sand (silica-rich sand)... lead, and tin, and the painted decoration is done with metallic oxides such as cobalt blue, iron oxide, and antimony oxide.