Mediaeval Pottery of North-west Europe.—The mediaeval pottery of western Europe is unpretentious and often crude in technique, but shows at the same time great virility and dignity of form. Glaze had passed entirely out of use in the Dark Ages. On later wares, when present, it is a soft galena glaze, sometimes stained brown with iron or green with copper. Decoration is effected by scratching with a point, or by impression with cut stamps or the application of reliefs such as overlapping scales or strips of clay pressed on with the potter's thumb, or rough floral and heraldic ornaments shaped in moulds; painting with red, brown and white clay pigments is the exception, but clays of various colour are often combined in relief decorations. Ves sels such as aquamaniles, in rude human or animal form, and jugs modelled into human features, are not unusual. These characteris tics are common to France, Germany and England.
In France the revival of glaze began in the 13th century, when Savignies, in the neighbourhood of Beauvais, began to become an important centre of production, of which in the 15th and 16th centuries the bluish-glazed wares with applied heraldic and floral ornament enjoyed some esteem; from the 14th century La Chapelle-des-Pots near Saintes, was another important centre. Fine earthenware with inscriptions in Gothic characters and floral designs, made after the Italian manner by the sgraffito technique and including Italian shapes such as the albarello jar, appear to wards 150o, and shortly after polychrome lead-glazed wares began to be made. Ornamental earthenware finials for gables were produced, especially in Normandy, from late mediaeval times onward.
Remains of mediaeval potter's kilns have been found in Eng land at Nottingham, Lincoln and Cheam, and community of char acteristics amongst vessels dug up at Oxford indicate local pro duction; the same is true of York, and simple pottery must have been made at many other places. The earliest remaining wares, certain tall slender jugs of light buff earthenware, with a double swell in their profile, are attributed to the 13th century. In the 14th century forms tend to become more squat, glaze and applied or incised decorations appear. Greater refinement of shape is seen in green-glazed jugs of the 15th century, and under the Tudors elaborate moulded heraldic reliefs are found. In Germany the hard-fired semi-vitrified ware known as stoneware was first made, from the 14th century onwards. The earliest specimens are slender jugs, strongly wheel
marked, in a creamy-white body, made at Siegburg near Bonn. Drinking-vessels of great elaboration, often double-walled, the outer wall being pierced with Gothic tracery, were made of a hard brown ware in the 15th century at Dreihausen, Hesse. Floor-tiles form a great part of the output of mediaeval kilns, and were made wherever great churches were being built. Those of France and England have glazed bichromatic inlaid decoration, the German tiles, mostly unglazed, showing stamped or moulded designs. Tile work was used in Germany for architectural details also, and especially for stoves.
French and German Lead-glazed Earthenware.—With the arrival of the renaissance in France pottery rose in that coun try to a higher level. of general esteem, and two highly specialized experimental developments took place. One of these passed with out lasting influence on ceramic history, that of the famous so called Henri II. ware; the place of its production was for long a mystery but it is now known to have been made at St. Porchaire in Poitou, approximately from 1525 to 156o. It is of a fine whitish clay, with a cream-coloured glaze, and decorated with designs built up from impressions of metal stamps like those of a book binder and inlaid in the manner of niello with darker clays; in the later examples touches of blue, green and purple pigment are added. The early forms are imitations of metalwork; later, salt cellars, standing cups and ewers were built up like architecture in miniature with applied reliefs and statuettes and inlays imitating tile pavements. Devices of Francois I. and Henri II. and the crescents of Diane de Poitiers appear on many of the pieces.