The World Turned Upside Down

The phrase “everything happens for a reason” makes sense only when one looks backward. It’s cold comfort to anyone facing an uncertain future. Still, some things actually do happen for a reason.

In the early 18th century, for example, French king Louis XIV found himself once again out of money. His costly wars against the English and Dutch (i.e.; the War of Devolution, the Dutch War, the War of the Spanish Succession, etc.) led him to enact various Sumptuary Laws restricting the amount of silver, gold, and other metals that the flock of aesthete nobility around him could flaunt. The Sun King needed precious metals to fill his coffers and base metals to make his cannons.

This situation turned out to be very good for the potters of France, and it’s a fair bet they knew this. After all, their wares could not be melted down into ingots or shot. French potters, inspired and instructed by Italian tin glaze potters, had mastered the “grand feu” maiolica process in the mid 16th century. By Louis XIV’s reign, they greatly expanded their color pallette with the “petit fue” faience enameling process. A host of new, flamboyant styles burst on the scene.

The Rayonant style, inspired by Japanese Imari porcelain (then all the rage) defined French Rococo faience. Armorial plates were a big part of this new French work. Faience parlant (speaking faience), with imagery featuring cartoons and text, was equally popular.

Another unusual style was called Singerie. It featured monkey imagery – “singe” means “monkey” in French. Prancing, mischievous monkeys hopped across a wide variety of wares. They were so mischievous they hopped across national boundaries to create a continent-wide fashion. Monkeys were seen on English tankards, chopping down trees full of eligible bachelors to the delight of on-looking maidens. In sprawling Portuguese tiled murals, they were livery attendants to sumptuous weddings of hens…

An entire genre of prancing, mischievous monkey pottery came into being because of the proclivities of a powerful man with no sense of fiscal responsibility.

Of course this result only makes sense if looked at, mischievously, backwards. If one looks the other way, and tries to discern possible future outcomes of a man who is today in a position of power and who has absolutely no sense of responsibility – fiscal or otherwise – one can only imagine what mischievous results we might end up with…

Readings:

Tin-Glazed Earthenware In North America. Amanda Lange. Historic Deerfield/Deerfield, MA. 2001.

Gifts for Good Children; The History of Children’s China, 1790 – 1890. Noel Riley. Richard Dennis Publishing/Somerset, England. 1991.

Azulejos; Masterpieces of the National Tile Museum of Lisbon. Editions Chandeigne/Paris. 2016.

Fist Fights

A question arises when pondering the utter chaos currently unfolding in war torn areas across the globe: Where did they get all those guns?  The modern world is flooded with weaponry.  Narrowly defined Second Amendment arguments notwithstanding, a gigantic (and barely regulated) weapons industry makes a damned good profit off of death and destruction.  It wasn’t always like this… 

Anyway, once upon a time an intense rivalry existed between potters in the port city of Vila Nova, Portugal.  Vila Nova was home to a booming tin glazed pottery export industry about 100 years before northern European ‘delftware’ swept all before it.

Not much is written in English about Portuguese pottery.  Lisbon was the first and biggest production center.  As Lisbon’s reputation grew, potters in other areas got in on the trade.  Just before Portuguese independence from Spain in 1635 a huge spike in popularity occurred.  Suddenly all Portuguese, rich and poor, used tin glazed ware.  Most of it was plain, and much of that was intended for convents (Portugal had lots of convents).  But the blue and white stuff was the best in the world at the time.

Vila Nova was well suited for shipping pottery to other places, so potters there wanted in.  The trouble was, they had no clay.  They imported clay from Lisbon.  Vila Nova potters seem to have had no mutually accepted way of dividing up the shipments, except one.  It was not uncommon for fist fights to break out at the docks.  The biggest fists got first in line.

Quality tanked once tin glazing spread to the rest of Europe.  From then on Portugal’s potters basically copied whatever was popular at the time.  And after the rise of Delft, Portuguese wares were mostly directed to their own rural market.

Back on the Vila Nova docks, the potters could have resorted to the courts to settle their differences had they thought to draw up legal contracts for purchasing clay.  But lawyers often get short shrift for hawking their peculiar ‘wares.’ Still, I’d prefer a lawyer’s method of conflict resolution over fist fights.  Even more so over today’s facile method of simply blowing someone’s head off.

Reading:

Portuguese Faience in England and Ireland (British Archaeological Reports International Series).  Tania Manuel Casimiro.   British Archaeological Reports/London.  2011.

 

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