Majolica

Majolica names two different kinds of pottery from different periods, tin glazed earthenware that reached Italy from Spain and Majorca from the mid fifteenth century onward, and, from the mid to late nineteenth century, earthenware finished with colored lead silicate glazes; the English spelling with a j replaced the earlier maiolica after that letter entered the alphabet in the seventeenth century. Tin glazed majolica required a four stage process of dipping the piece in tin glaze, letting it dry, hand painting it with metal oxide enamels and firing it, a technique demanding real artistic skill, while the later colored glaze majolica used a simpler two stage method of painting colored lead glazes directly onto unglazed earthenware before firing, which made production faster and cheaper. The colored glaze style reached wide prominence at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, where Minton and Co introduced their Palissy ware, and it went on to be mass produced across Europe and America, becoming one of the defining decorative ceramics of the Victorian era.