Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Delftware: Let each tile stand alone, with corner motifs linking them into a field
- Type
- Set in Delftware's manner (Keep marks small on the underside and leave the face to painting), and let Talavera Poblana's lettering (If words are needed, run them once around the rim in the same blue and the same brush as the painting. Keep each workshop's hand rather than regularising it into type) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Delftware's material (Cobalt on white tin glaze, painted in one pass with no correction); bring in exactly one thing from Talavera Poblana (Age the clay, throw or mould the form, biscuit fire it, then lay on a thick white glaze containing tin. Paint straight onto the dry powdery glaze with cobalt, and fire once more so glaze and painting set together).
- Colour
- Build on #e9f1f3, #8ba2b4, #2e5774 and admit one accent from #F4EFE4, #23458C, #D9A425.
Where they fight
- Delftware and Talavera Poblana both belong to Ceramic Styles, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- Delftware Aiming to pass as real porcelain turns the thick earthenware body and the speed of the brush from virtues into faults.
- Talavera Poblana Regularise the brushwork and you lose the drag of a brush over thick glaze, so the painting starts to look printed on.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Delftware (style, 1600s–) and their accent from Talavera Poblana (style, 16th century–). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Delftware exists for: pulling tableware and walls into one room through blue painting alone, or using Eastern motifs while admitting openly that they are translations. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Delftware - Painting in blue alone - White tin-glaze ground - Eastern motifs translated - From tiles to tableware Composition: Let each tile stand alone, with corner motifs linking them into a field. Type and lettering: Keep marks small on the underside and leave the face to painting. ## Accent comes from Talavera Poblana, used sparingly - A thick milky white glaze covers the whole piece and pools into a visible step at rim and foot - Compartmented borders painted in a single blue run all the way around the rim - Among Chinese style flowers and rocks sits one local figure, such as a quetzal or a crowned double-headed eagle - Tiles repeat one design across a whole wall, and no two carry the same brush pressure Let one material quality come from it: Age the clay, throw or mould the form, biscuit fire it, then lay on a thick white glaze containing tin. Paint straight onto the dry powdery glaze with cobalt, and fire once more so glaze and painting set together. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #e9f1f3, carry the structure in #8ba2b4 and #2e5774, and let a single accent come from #D9A425. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: luxury, nostalgia, calm, trust, exhilaration. ## Where they fight - Delftware and Talavera Poblana both belong to Ceramic Styles, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. ## What goes wrong - Delftware: Aiming to pass as real porcelain turns the thick earthenware body and the speed of the brush from virtues into faults. - Talavera Poblana: Regularise the brushwork and you lose the drag of a brush over thick glaze, so the painting starts to look printed on. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Delftware 1600s– / Style / Ceramic Styles
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.
- Talavera Poblana 16th century– / Style / Ceramic Styles
Talavera is the tin-glazed earthenware that Spanish potters' technique became in and around Puebla, painted over a thick milky white glaze. Local potters borrowed the blue-and-white schemes of Chinese porcelain that crossed the Pacific and passed through the city, then mixed in local figures such as the quetzal and the double-headed eagle. That crossing is what separates it from the Spanish maiolica it started from.
Share this composition:https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=delftware+talavera-poblana