Unknown Maker, Italian

This large, nearly all-white charger makes clear the most significant effect of the incorporation of tin oxide to traditional lead glaze, that of adding opaque white to the palette of glaze colors. In the centuries before 18th-century European potters learned how to make porcelain, refined white ceramics were only known to them through imports from China and Japan. Earthenware and stoneware were the materials familiar outside the Far East and these ceramic types were less resistant to changing temperatures and less fine, never achieving the lightness or translucence of porcelain. The difficulty of bringing porcelain over land to Europe by pack animal and later, by sea, meant its scarcity and expense. Naturally, it lead to the interest of western potters in creating a less costly substitute. Tin-glaze was one such solution learned from Middle Eastern potters who brought their wares and later their technology to the West beginning with the Muslim

dominance of Spain in the 8th century.