ll the
colours are due to the clays and there is no approach to painting. In
the Moslem countries--including the greater part of Spain and Sicily,
Egypt and the nearer East, probably even to the very centre of
Asia--pottery was being made either of whitish clay and sand, or of a
light reddish clay coated with a white facing of fine clay or of
tin-enamel, on which splendid decorative patterns in vivid pigments or
brilliant iridescent lustres were painted.

As early as the 12th century of our era this superior artistic pottery
of the Moslem nations had already attracted the notice of Europeans as
an article of luxury for the wealthy; and we may well believe the
traditional accounts that Saracen potters were brought into Italy,
France and Burgundy to introduce the practice of their art, while
Italian potters certainly penetrated into the workshops of eastern Spain
and elsewhere, and gathered new ideas. In Italy certainly, and in the
south of France probably, efforts were continuously in progress to
improve the native wares by coating the vessels with a white "slip" and
drawing on them rude, painted patterns in green, yellow and purplish
black. The increasing intercourse with Spain, in war and peace, also
introduced the use of tin-enamel after the fashion of the famous
Hispano-Moresque wares, and by the end of the 14th century a knowledge
of tin-enamel was widespread in Italy and paved the way to the glorious
painted majolica of the 15th and 16th centuries. From Italy and Spain,
France and Holland, Germany, and finally, though much later, England
learnt this art, and the tin-enamelled pottery of middle and northern
Europe, so largely made during the 17th and 18th centuries, was the
direct offshoot of this movement of the Italian Renaissance.[2]

During the 15th and 16th centuries Chinese porcelain also began to find
its way into Europe, and by the whiteness of its substance and its
marvellous translucence excited the attention of the Italian majolists
and alchemists. The first European imitation of this famous oriental
porcelain of which we have indubitable record was made at Florence
(1575-1585) by alchemists or potters working under the patronage, and,
it is said, with the active collaboration of Francesco de' Medici. This
Florentine porcelain was the first of those distinctively European
wares, made in avowed imitation of the Chinese, which form a connecting
link between pottery and glass, for they may be considered eit