What is faience?
Faience is a type of earthenware in which a porous yellowish body is coated with a white tin-bearing glaze and then painted in bright colours. Faience is recognisable from its vivid colours and glossy finish, and is widely used for wall tiles, floor tiles and architectural ornament.
Origin
The word faience comes from Faenza, the Italian town where the technique flourished from the 15th century. The technique itself is older, with Arabic and Persian roots.
Diffusion of faience:
| Period | Place | Style |
|---|---|---|
| 9th c. | Mesopotamia | Earliest tin-glaze production |
| 13th c. | Spain (Mudéjar) | Hispano-Moresque |
| 15th c. | Italy | Faenza, Deruta, Urbino |
| 16th c. | Netherlands | Delft blue (delftware) |
| 17th c. | France | Rouen, Nevers, Strasbourg |
| 18th c. | Britain | Bristol delftware |
Production
Making faience involves several steps:
- Forming — clay shaped on the wheel or in a mould
- First firing (biscuit firing) — at about 950 °C the body is hardened
- Glazing — dipping in tin glaze (white opaque coating)
- Painting — with metal-oxide pigments on the raw glaze
- Second firing (glaze firing) — at 950–1000 °C the glaze melts and fixes the image
Painting demands precision: the glaze is porous and absorbs the paint immediately — corrections are nearly impossible.
Application in construction
Faience appears in architectural contexts:
Tiles
- Wall tiles — kitchens, bathrooms, fireplace surrounds
- Floor tiles — churches, palaces, grand rooms
- Tile pictures — multi-tile scenes on a wall
- Skirting tiles — finished edges at the base of walls
Architectural ornament
- Fireplace surrounds — decorative framing
- Fountains — outdoor decoration
- Façade ornaments — friezes, panels, borders
- Staircases — wall and tread decoration
Famous examples
- Park Güell (Barcelona) — Antoni Gaudí used broken faience mosaic (trencadís)
- Delft tiles — Delft blue wall and fireplace tiles
- Lisbon and Porto — façades clad in azulejo
- Iznik (Turkey) — mosques in the Ottoman Empire
Care and maintenance
Faience is vulnerable to:
- Moisture behind the body — can cause detachment
- Frost damage — when used outdoors
- Scratching — glaze is hard but brittle
- Fine crazing — fine hairline cracks (sometimes desirable)
Restoring faience is a craft: matching colours and reproducing the tin-glaze layer takes years of experience.
Difference from related materials
- Majolica — Italian variant of faience
- Azulejo — Portuguese and Spanish ceramic tile
- Porcelain — harder, denser body, different process
- Stoneware — non-porous, fired at higher temperature
Related terms
- Glaze
- Floor tile
- Mosaic
- Azulejo
- Tile
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