Faience

Description

1) A highly colored, opaque glaze used for pottery, ceramic tiles, and architectural terracotta, particularly in the 16th-18th centuries in France and Germany. Faience was the French name given to a tin-glazed pottery originally made in Faenze, Italy. The Italian made pottery is now called majolica.

2) Any glazed earthenware.

3) Finely glazed Egyptian pottery.

Synonyms and Related Terms

faience (Ned.); faïence (Fr.); faiança (Port.); fayence; majolica

Additional Information

P.Nicholson, E.Peltenburg, "Egyptian Faience" in Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology, P.Nicholson, I.Shaw (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 177.

Authority

• Dictionary of Building Preservation, Ward Bucher, ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York City, 1996

• Robert Fournier, Illustrated Dictionary of Practical Pottery, Chilton Book Company, Radnor, PA, 1992

• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997

• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998

• Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com Comment: "faience." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2005. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service 4 Feb. 2005 .

• Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, at http://www.wikipedia.com Comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faience