Talavera Poblana

タラベラ・ポブラーナ / 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.

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

Talavera Poblana — Talavera jar, 18th century, Museo Franz Mayer — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 — Talavera jar, 18th century, Museo Franz Mayer — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 ／ Colonial-era Talavera basin, Museo Franz Mayer — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 ／ Talavera tile plaque on the Casa de la China Poblana, Puebla — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Talavera Poblana — Colonial-era Talavera basin, Museo Franz Mayer — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 — Talavera jar, 18th century, Museo Franz Mayer — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 ／ Colonial-era Talavera basin, Museo Franz Mayer — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 ／ Talavera tile plaque on the Casa de la China Poblana, Puebla — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Dictionary entry

Best used for: When a kitchen or a facade should be covered surface by surface in one repeating tile · When a piece stays blue and white but needs exactly one local figure inside it
Type: 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.
Composition: Work concentrically: a band of small compartments at the rim, one main figure at the centre. The white of the glaze is the empty space, so none has to be carved out.
Material: 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.
Caution: Regularise the brushwork and you lose the drag of a brush over thick glaze, so the painting starts to look printed on.
Further study: the phrase milky white base glaze that the Getty AAT places in its definition of Talavera (300379981) / the description of the process in the 2019 UNESCO inscription, clay preparation, forming, painting, compounding of glaze and pigment, and control of the kiln / how Chinese porcelain compositions are borrowed on the Puebla jar (O162382) and large basin (O162356) in the V&A

Related entries

Cite this entry

The dictionary is meant to be linked to. Take whichever form fits where you are writing.

Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/talavera-poblana
Markdown: [Talavera Poblana — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/talavera-poblana)
HTML: <a href="https://indexstyle.org/styles/talavera-poblana">Talavera Poblana — IndexStyle</a>

Back to index position