This is my first attempt at sgraffito. In 1997, we had an Ithra session (classes in various medieval topics) at my farm. A friend decided to teach a class on slip decoration of plates, and we made some plates for the students to decorate. Some were left plain, while we also did a few with a layer of contrasting slip for the students to try sgraffito. A year later, I found this plate, bone dry, in my basement. Clearly, we had forgotten about it. I thought, "what the heck," sprayed it with water and tried doing some sgraffito on it, just for fun.
Ages ago, someone, I no longer remember who, said to me, "I don't know why you don't do sgraffito. With your interest in clay and your drawing ability, it would seem to me to be a natural." I can recall the words pretty much verbatim, and I know it was while I was at art school in Nelson, but I honestly don't remember who said it to me.
I was a bit nervous about what I should do as a design, since I knew that you can't correct mistakes. So I looked in my trusty World Ceramics book for some ideas. And here were these two birds with a tree of life between them, done in sgraffito on a plate from the Byzantine Empire.
The clay was way too dry to be able to do a good job. The white layer often flaked away in chunks because it was so dry, which is why some lines are so thick in places. I covered up the flaw by making all of the lines thicker in that part of the pattern ("the difference between amateurs and professionals is that professionals know how to cover their mistakes.") It was more like plaster than clay. But I kept hacking away until it was done.
It was pretty exciting to see it once it was finished. It looked even better once it was glazed and fired. What doesn't show up in photographs is the three-dimensional quality of the plates. There's this highly decorated surface, which is very graphic because of using only two colours, and stylized. But with that is this carved texture and depth that gives it life and movement.
Byzantine potters did very quick, almost nervous looking sgraffito. Then they slopped colour on top, with very little reference to the incised design. And then a lead glaze was put on top, probably in powder form. By this time, the design was completely covered with layers of minerals. When it came out of the kiln, the colours had run and slid under the glaze. There was some kind of chemical interaction between glaze and underglaze that produced this runny effect.
Personally, it drives me crazy. I've never liked runny glazes. And the apparent lack of attention to the sgraffito seemed sloppy to me.
But one day, I tried copying a border pattern from a book I have on Byzantine ceramics. At first, I was looking at the reconstructed portion of a bowl. But when I realized it was reconstructed, I began to follow the original (which was much dimmer and harder to see. This was why I had begun with the modern version). It was a pretty simple pattern of trefoil leaves curled into a scroll pattern. But the Byzantine potter was just a crazy man, doing it differently every time. At first I thought, "this guy was just too lazy to get it right." But when I tried it, I found that doing what he had done took more concentration and effort than doing it the same way every time.
Islam forbids it followers from eating off of metal. This means that, unlike medieval Europe, where ceramics were mainly relegated to the pantry and kitchen for food storage and cooking while the good dishes were metal or wood, pottery in Islamic countries became a highly prized art form. Islam also forbids the use of graven images, usually taken to mean images of people, in art.
Meanwhile, within the Byzantine Empire, there was a serious debate about the use of images in religious and government art. Art became highly stylized in Byzantium, which led to the development of icons as religious art.
It has been suggested that pottery, being a private art form used only within the home, was the one place where artists and consumers of the art could cut loose. Islamic and Byzantine pottery is covered with dancing girls, animals, wildly scrolling leaves and vines, all done in sgraffito under runny coloured glazes, or in loosely brushed over- and under-glaze colours on tin white. Islamic potters also perfected lustre glazes. Lustres are small amounts of metal painted on over a fired glaze.
All ceramic colours are due to minerals in the clay. In most cases, these minerals are metals in another form. If you apply pure metal to a pot and fire it, odds are the metal will turn flat, or flake off. Combining metal with organic compounds so that you can use it like paint, then firing and cooling it the precise way to leave shiny metal was brought to a high art by Muslim potters, especially in Egypt under the Fatimid dynasty. Lustre ware was exported across the Mediterranean.
Islamic potters taught many of their techniques to Byzantine potters, or Byzantine potters copied, as best they could, the styles and techniques of pottery imported from Islamic countries.
Meanwhile, in Spain, Moorish (Muslim) potters were using similar techniques. Maiolica was probably first introduced to Europe through Spain. Spanish potters also used sgraffito.
In the fifteenth century, the Catholic kings of Spain (Ferdinand and Isabella being the best-known of these. And no, that's not a mistake. She was described as one of Los Reyes Catolicos, the Catholic Kings) wrested more and more of Spain away from the Moors, until in 1492, the last stronghold of Muslim power was seized. All Muslims in Spain had to flee or convert. Many fled to Italy, as well as other countries. Spanish potters brought their craft with them.
So Italian potters learned about sgraffito from both sides of them, from Byzantine pottery on their eastern shores, and from Spanish potters fleeing from the west.
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