Pottery is a survivor! If there is one thing that is found on an archeological dig, its pottery. While wood, fabric and other materials having long since gone, maybe not a complete vessel, perhaps just pottery shards, but usually enough for an accurate dating to be made.
These surviving specimens are very often pre-historic, clearly demonstrating early mankind's use of clay and water!
There are many types of pottery and porcelains with histories long forgotten and it is one such as this that we look at here.
Lustre wares, or lustre pottery is one of the earliest decorative ceramic forms known and is recognised as originating from the Middle East. Lustreware first appeared in Baghdad and Samarra in about the ninth century AD.
At this time, Baghdad was the world's largest city and centre of the great Abbasid Arab Empire. Baghdad was a seat of learning with many universities where medicine, mathematics, astrology and science were taught.
The arts flourished with the ruling Caliphs who were great admirers and collectors of Chinese Tang dynasty porcelain. The porcelain was imported from China via the trading caravans travelling the long Silk Road.
It is always difficult to establish the accuracy of information from the 9th and 10th centuries, but there are persistent stories that tell of potters being abducted from Chinese ceramic centres and taken to Baghdad. These "pottery prisoners" were set to work with the expectation of porcelain being produced.
Without the very specific clays and kaolin for the production of porcelain available, the unfortunate Chinese potters had to improvise with available clays and eventually developed white glazes in an attempt to imitate the look of porcelain.
Nobody really knows, whether by accident or by experimentation, but the Chinese potters applied glassmaking techniques, techniques so ancient that their origins stretch back to the Egypt of the Pharaohs.
It would be more than interesting to know, just how and why these ninth century Chinese potters, so far from home, chose to decorate their Baghdad pots with metallic pigments, however they did so and as a result, lustre pottery was born!
Lustre ware produced an almost instant reaction with its golden iridescent glaze. At first it was considered alchemy, because the process involves using a lead-based glaze to create a golden shine on a pot, but without gold in it!
The essence of lustre, is of course found in the over glaze, the glazes containing lead, copper, silver, or even gold. When fired, the powder-like, metallic pigments produced the most brilliant iridescence ever seen on a ceramic body.
Copper resulted in a brilliant red, silver may result in a glaze of bright silver lustre, or sometimes golden. The range of lustre colours is extensive, including pink, purple, canary yellow and moonlight lustre to name only a few from this incredible palette.
The result was completely indiscriminate, relying completely on the firing conditions of the kiln with the result being unpredictable.
On a technical note, lustre wares require three firings: - the first to fire, or harden the clay, the second to fire, or fix the plain glaze and finally, the third firing. It is this third time in the kiln that produces the lustre result.
The pottery shape would have been decorated, in accordance with Islamic culture, with a pattern, such as flowers and foliage, or a geometric or stylized decoration. The decoration now painted on with the chosen design, containing the suspended metallic particles.
This third, important firing is the lowest temperature of the three firings and is at this critical period, that the kiln is "starved of oxygen", with the metallic compound chemically "reduced" to the suspended base metal. The results were and are still not always as expected!
Lustre ware has a significant failure rate with only the most brilliant examples being kept. It is not usual, for even two examples from a firing to look exactly the same - such is the unpredictability of the result.
From Baghdad the technique spread to Syria and Egypt where the process became more refined, with examples from the 12th century still admired for their beauty. With the Arab influence in southern Spain, lustre ware was adopted as a Spanish ceramic art, as it was in 15th century Italy.
Lustre ware was not re discovered in England until the early 19th century when it was popularised by Spode and Wedgwood with many other more widely recognised names, such as Sunderland lustre and Wedgwood's famous 20th. century Fairy Land lustre.
The lustre lamps illustrated (which can be seen on the companies web site) are examples made during the first half of the 20th century and were produced by Thomas of Bavaria around the period1920 -1930.
The history of the company begins in 1898 with the opening of the first porcelain factory in the Bavarian town of Marktredwitz and was known as the "Porzellanfabrik Jaeger -Thomas & Co". Thomas had, what would be called today, "management problems". He and Jaeger were having constant disputes, often ending with shouting and heated arguments. So in 1903, Thomas decided to establish his own factory.
For some months prior to leaving, he was having secret talks with a new prospective partner; Ens. Thomas took things slowly, not wishing to repeat his Jaeger history. Thomas was delighted as Ens was not interested in the running of the business, or in artistic direction, but wished only to be an investor which resulted in the birth of the "Porzellanfabrik - Thomas & Ens" 1903. The new partnership was an immediate success and Thomas had all the freedom of artistic expression he could wish for.
Thomas was so successful that he soon caught the eye of the much bigger company of Rosenthal. By 1908, Ens decided to look elsewhere for investment and informed Thomas that he was withdrawing his interest.
This is just what Rosenthal had been waiting for and quickly made a move, becoming a major shareholder in 1908. This now left Thomas as an independent subsidiary of Rosenthal until 1960. The company continued to hold the registered rights and trademarks of Thomas until 2004 when the trademark was let go.
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