Plate with Water Bird

Spanish

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 307

Ceramic artists working in Seville in the late 1400s and early 1500s revived the laborious process of cuerda seca, which had been common in Spain centuries earlier. In this technique, outlines of a design are painted onto the clay using a mixture of manganese and oil. The painted lines dry into a resist barrier that keeps differently colored glazes apart. Objects made via cuerda seca were often expensive export items shipped to Africa, northern Europe, and the Americas.

Plate with Water Bird, Tin-glazed earthenware (cuerda seca technique), Spanish

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