Azulejo vs Delftware
アズレージョ / デルフト焼
Azulejo comes from Ornament and Delftware from Ceramic Styles. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Azulejo
Portugal's blue-and-white tile works as the skin of architecture, opening story, map and ornament onto the street until the city itself can be read as a printed plate.
Delftware
Longing for Chinese porcelain, Delft produced tin-glazed pottery of its own. Windmills, ships and Eastern scenes painted in blue alone fixed 'blue and white' as a Western language of table and room, chinoiserie put into practice.
| Azulejo | Delftware | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 15th century– | 1600s– |
| Family | Ornament | Ceramic Styles |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Blue-and-white tile / Narrative panels wall-high / Repeating pattern / One body with the building | Painting in blue alone / White tin-glaze ground / Eastern motifs translated / From tiles to tableware |
| Best used for | Using a building's wall as a large plate the passerby can read · Covering rooms floor to ceiling in repeats for coolness and continuity | Pulling tableware and walls into one room through blue painting alone · Using Eastern motifs while admitting openly that they are translations |
| Type | Fire the inscription in the same blue and frame it into the wall | Keep marks small on the underside and leave the face to painting |
| Composition | Set the tile grid first, compose so breaks fall on the joints | Let each tile stand alone, with corner motifs linking them into a field |
| Material | Cobalt blue on white glaze, judged with the gloss reflection included | Cobalt on white tin glaze, painted in one pass with no correction |
| Caution | Laying a large picture out without regard for the joints misaligns grid and drawing, and the wall looks like a printed sheet pasted on. | Aiming to pass as real porcelain turns the thick earthenware body and the speed of the brush from virtues into faults. |