Maiolica it is red terracotta pottery with a tin oxide glaze that covers the red clay surface with an opaque white layer. The white layer forms a background that allows the ceramic artist to paint imagery with the addition of brightly colored glazes. The artist’s palette was primarily restricted to five colors: cobalt blue, antimony yellow, iron red, copper green, and manganese purple. The figures are delineated primarily with blue lines and filled in with washes of pale blue for shading and then the other colors. After the painting is complete, the vessel is given a second firing to secure the colors.The plat below has gold luster added to create the stars
Maiolica tin glazed pottery was first made in Spain in the 8th century. And was introduced to Italy in the 15th century where Italian Renaissance artists developed its pictorial potential to its full effect. The Italian name, Maiolica, is said to come from the fact that the pottery was introduced to Italy from the Island of Majorca or from the Spanish city of Malaga. In English the name of the pottery is often spelled Majolica, but there was no letter J in Italy until 1524. Centers of production included Faena, Deruta, Urbino, Orvieto, Gubbio, Savona, and Florence, and it is still produced in some of these areas today. Whenever I have visited Florence, I have been sure to buy some modern examples. when Italian maiolica was exported, it was referred to as faience, because much of it was made in Faenza.
In Holand a type of tin glazed ceramic developed that made use of cobalt blue alone on the white background. This was called Delft. It was often used on flat architectural tiles. Later Dutch artists used tin glazed terracotta with a blue glaze to imitate Chinese porcelain. European potteries had not yet figured out how the Chinese had managed to make pure white porcelain clay. In 1709, however, Johann Friedrich Bottger, a German alchemist, determined how to make porcelain. In 1710, a German pottery factory near Dresden began producing porcelain ware. Porcelain eventually took over the market. But Maiolica continues to be made in Italy.
I first discovered Maiolica when I was studying art in college, in New Jersey, in the 1960s. I found a large art book about Maiolica in the school library, and I was amazed to find such a treasure trove of free spontaneous Renaissance art works. These 15th and 16th century works had something modern about them. The delineated drawings, the free brush work, and the limited palette, as well as the mythical subjects and grotesque ornaments, appealed to me and had a lasting influence on my art.
While I was in college, I would regularly take a day every other week to drive an hour into New York City to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While exploring the museum on many occasions, I had not encountered any Maiolica. But one day I was in the Medieval section on the first floor, and I noticed a stone stairway leading to a lower section below ground. I was intrigued and decided to investigate. What I found amazed me, this entire below ground gallery was dedicated to European decorative arts, mostly Maiolica (the works have since been moved and are now spread throughout the European galleries on the first floor). I was now able to study the pieces close up and I returned on many occasions to made drawings of some of the objects.
Besides bowls and plates, the most common objects that the artists chose to decorate were apothecary jars called albarello, and apothecary vases with or without handles. They were designed to hold medicinal herbs, spices, dyes, or ointments and they livened up the shelves of apothecaries in Italy’s cities. The flared lip on the albarello allowed the apothecary to cover the jar with a piece of parchment or cloth and tie it closed with a piece of string. This sealed the contents and kept them fresh. The parchment was often bleached white so that the contents of the jar could be written on it. Sometimes the label was glazed directly onto body of the vessel instead. The apothecary as well as the physician in the Renaissance were both considered to be practicing branches of alchemy (modern chemistry did not emerge from alchemy until the mid-17th century). So, to my mind, it is fair to consider these colorful vases examples of alchemical vessels.
When I first designed the Alchemical Tarot in the 1990s, I decided that the suit of Cups should depict alchemical Lab equipment made of clay or glass. Therefore, I changed the name of the suit to Vessels. Since then, after examining many historical Tarot and Minchiate decks, I came to realize that in the past the suit of Cups often depicted what we would consider vases, as we can see in this Four of Cups from an 1810 Minchiate card. So, I decided when I was redesigning the Alchemical Tarot, for the new Alchemical Tarot Reimagined, that I would keep the Cups title for the suit. Also because of my fascination with Maiolica, I decided I would take on the task of depicting alchemical Maiolica apothecary vessels. Because of the glazing on the jars, this presented me with the challenge of depicting the vases with three-dimensional shading while maintaining the colorful imagery. But the imagery also provided an extra vehicle for the symbolism on the cards. And I was able to add meaningful labels. This is the most challenging suit of cards that I have designed. I hope you like the result.
