Mexican majolica production

Neutron activation and petrographic analysis of late medieval Spanish pottery from the major Spanish production centers of Seville, Granada, Patema-Manises, Barcelona, and Talavera-Puente allowed progress to be made in uniquely characterizing these production centers (5-7). Efforts to identify different Mexican majolica productions petrographically have been unsuccessful, and an attempt at chemical characterization by directly coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy was later determined to have been flawed by problems encountered with the dissolution of the ceramic samples... 

The ceramic samples selected for discussion in this chapter are those of Mexican production. As reported by Maggetti et al. (5), the Mexican majolica production includes both calcareous and noncalcareous paste compositions. This chapter will focus on the calcareous Mexican majolica. The following ware types were selected to examine questions of the assignation... 

The Mexican majolica production of the 16th and 17th centuries can be chemically classified into two very distinct groups based on chromium, iron, and scandium concentrations. One of these groups matches the composition of modern Puebla majolica and can be assigned to a Puebla production. This... 

Treatment of the Raw Materials. Based on the field expedition to Mexico in 1981 and the subsequent mineralogical and chemical analyses of the collected clays and modern majolica, much more can be worked out on the technique of ancient Mexican majolica production. The low calcium content of the Valle Ware specimens points to the use of a noncalcareous clay. The observed mineralogical matching of these specimens with modern black clays from Puebla (SD 47 and SD 48) and ancient Pre-Columbian pottery (I-l, 1-2, SC 98, SC 99) suggests that these objects have been made from the locally available common red-burning volcanic clays, which were used extensively in Pre-Columbian time. There is no further evidence from microscopic inspection that supplementary addition of another material took place. These clays were therefore used, possibly after a sieving, as they have been found. 

This chapter is an attempt to refine the classification of Mexican majolica ceramics from Spanish Colonial sites by using chemical data obtained by neutron activation analysis. The ceramics examined came primarily from excavations in Mexico City and from the Santa Catalina de Guale Mission site, St. Catherines Island, GA. The majolica types from these sites are both Spanish and Mexican and date from the 16th to the late 17th century. A rationale for the chemical classification of Mexico City and Puebla production is proposed. 

The chemical composition of imported, European-made majolica is different from that of majolica made in Mexico (J). The difiFerences in the concentrations of the oxides of cerium, lanthanum, and thorium are eaily recognized the Spanish majolica contains approximately twice as much of each of these oxides as the Mexican majolica. The mineralogical composition, too, of the pottery products of each area is fundamentally different and can easily be identified. The ceramic types and their origins, based on archaeological arguments, can be found in Table I. 

Second, two specimens shown in Table I—one believed to have been made in Europe (SB 33), the other of questionable Mexican origin (SB 32)—contain volcanic temper and, therefore, belong to the New World production. Both specimens contain the cerium, lanthanum, and thorium oxide concentrations characteristic of Mexican majolica. 

From inquiries among Mexican archaeologists and ethnologists it became evident that no majolica is presently produced in the Valley of Mexico, but we found that there is still a small majolica production in Puebla. The majolica manufacturers visited in this city were the La Trinidad factory (Guevara sisters) and the Santa Maria factory (Padierna family). Both manufacturers work in an identical manner and use a clay body blended from a mixture of equal amounts of a black and a white clay. 

The research for this chapter was undertaken in an effort to explore this early trade in Mexican-made majolica. The identification of the major production sites and the date that production began is critical to the study. It... 

Our method for measuring lead isotope ratios in glazed pottery using EDTA extraction followed by ICP-MS has allowed us to study majolica from the northern frontier of New Spain with no apparent destruction to the artifacts. Our results are congruoit with previous research on lead isotope ratios in majolica pottery and our values for Pb/ Pb and Pb/ Pb fell within the range reported for both Spanish and Mexican mrgoUca 14). In addition, our results support previous studies that have cited a few production centers as responsible for supplying the people of New Spain wife majolica. 

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