bianco sopra bianco

▪ pottery decoration

      (Italian: “white on white”), mode of decoration originally practiced on 16th-century Urbino and Faenza majolica, or tin-glazed earthenware. It consisted of designs in an opaque, cool-white colour executed on a warmer, milk-white tin glaze. The technique was broadly revived about 1745 at the Swedish factory at Rörstrand, where it was used on grayish grounds. Within five years it was further imitated at Delft, at Lambeth, and at Bristol, where a popular rim decoration of leaf sprays and flowers in bianco sopra bianco was used. In France, too, the technique appeared at Nevers and at Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, towns that became known for ware with floral decoration in white on a bluish white ground, and, again, at Scandinavian factories, including those in the cities of Strålsund and Herrebøe.

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