ian majolica of the 15th and 16th centuries. In
the same way the practice of lustre decoration might have been learnt
from the Orient, but its late appearance on Italian wares (16th century)
and its evident relationship to the lustres of Spain, rather than to the
earlier lustres of Egypt, Syria and Persia, are further evidence that
though oriental decorative motives gave the Italians certain early types
of design, it is the Hispano-Moresque potters from whom the Italians
learnt the art they were afterwards to develop so splendidly in a new
direction.[15]

All the Italian pottery above the level of common crocks may be
conveniently grouped into four classes.

[Illustration: FIG. 44.--Italian Graffiato Plate, 16th century. (South
Kensington Museum.)]

1. The native wares, made of coarse and often dark-red clay, coated with
a white clay slip (a kind of pipe-clay) and covered with a crude lead
glaze, either yellow or green. The idea of rendering this ware
ornamental, and fitting it for more than vulgar use, led to a great
development of the _graffiato_ process; where, while the vessel, with
its white clay coating was firm yet soft enough, patterns were scratched
or engraved through the white slip to the red body beneath. This
decorative method has been already mentioned several times, for it was
practised during the early middle ages in all the countries from India
to Italy, and the Byzantine potters were adepts in its use. Nor has its
practice ever ceased in Italy, for through all the times when painted
majolica was the ware of the wealthy, this earlier and humbler pottery
was used by those who could not afford the former; and the
gaily-coloured later wares of this kind have a fine decorative quality
of their own. From the depth beneath the present soil at which fragments
of this ware have been disinterred, it is obvious that the method was
widely practised in early times, and no simpler glazed wares are known
except those covered all over with green, yellow or brown glazes. Early
examples have been found all over northern Italy--in Faenza, Florence,
Pisa, &c., and particularly in Padua, where it seems to have been
extensively made. Pavia was another centre of its manufacture, even to
the end of the 17th century, and Citta di Castello must have been noted
for it in the 16th century, for Piccolpasso describes this ware as "alla
Castellana" (see fig. 44). Apparently in the latter half of the 15th
century a sudden advance