1st Plate

 Isn’t it pretty?

Motifs and decoration:

I created this plate partly for the Winterfeast event. The theory was that I’d make one for each of the household with their device in the centre. Unfortunately only Rohan has a registered device and since he lives with me, he can paint his own! I’ll get to the rest, they’re just not at the top of the list currently. The badge for Exortis Solaris (our household) is a eight pointed star with NE, SE, SW and NW points being curved, i.e. a rising sun. Over this is a sword. I used figure 1 as my main inspiration and changed some of the arms of the star to be straight.

Figure 1: Dish, made in Triana, Spain, 1525-1550, tin-glazed earthenware with lustre decoration (V&A)

The back fill is not an exact replication as I’m still developing my skill with the brush. The dots and line work came out well however the floral section isn’t true to form and looks sparse on my plate.

For the inner band I took inspiration from another dish made in Triana (Figure 2). The band on the first plate sort of looks like calligraphy and I’d prefer not to have random things I don’t understand written on my work. Also, I prefer the look of the band on the second plate.

Figure 2: Inner Band decoration from a dish, made in Triana, Spain, 1525-1550, tin-glazed earthenware with lustre decoration

Colours:

Close inspection of my 1^st plate will show some streaky brown below the colours. Most of the 16^th cenurary Spanish plates I’ve examined are in glazed in earth tones. This is probably due to availability. The porcelain is also a creamy colour. two theories for this: darkening and discolouration over time or the original clay wasn’t as white as the items available to me. I suspect it’s a combination of the two. It’s going to be hard to tell until I find a broken or chipped image which’ll reveal the clay underneath. To replicate the tan stain I wiped the plate down with tan glaze (no. 4). It wasn’t very successful as you can see from Figure 3, the back of the plate, the glaze is very streaky. In future I’ll skip this step.

I was trying to get the right blue and yellow tones from the Spanish (?) Tazza previously undocumented. The blue has turned out wonderfully while the yellow remains splodgy. I think this is the result of covering large areas with paint. By the third coat you can’t tell if the brush is transferring glaze or just wetting the existing glaze. All in all, happy with the result and would love to see a full table setting for my household like this.

Figure 3: The back of my plate showing the streaky underglaze.