La faïence

 Hi everyone!

I’m a French student from the École du Louvre in Paris. My school was founded by the French Ministry of Culture and is located within the Louvre Palace. It trains future art historians, museum curators, and heritage specialists. During our undergraduate studies, we explore the history of art from different regions of the world through a chronological approach.

I chose to take part in this archaeological field school to discover an important chapter of both French and Michigan history. While excavating the site, we uncovered several ceramic fragments, including pieces of faience, a type of fine earthenware produced generally during the eighteenth century.

The word faience comes from the Italian town of Faenza, where this ceramic technique became famous throughout Europe. However, the technique itself was first developed in Samarra, Iraq, by Abbasid potters (750–1258), who sought to reproduce the brilliant white appearance of Chinese monochrome stoneware¹ To achieve this effect, they introduced a distinctive innovation that transformed the appearance of the ceramic.

The traditional grand feu faience process involves several stages:

- First, an object is shaped from a clay body composed mainly of clay mixed with fluxes to improve firing.

- It then undergoes a first firing, known as a bisque firing, which partially hardens the piece while allowing further decoration.

- The ceramic is coated with a tin-opacified glaze, a glass-based layer rich in silica that waterproofs the surface while concealing the natural color of the clay and producing the characteristic white background.

- Decoration is painted directly onto the glaze, most commonly using cobalt blue. Potters also used manganese oxide to create a purplish-brown color and copper oxide to produce green.

- Finally, the ceramic undergoes a second firing, around 1000° C (1832° F)²

The ceramic fragments discovered at Fort St. Joseph display several distinct characteristics. Some have a yellowish clay body with a rather matte glaze, while others have a whiter body and a glossy, crazed glaze. To better understand these differences, I carried out a simple water absorption test. When a drop of water is quickly absorbed by the ceramic body, it indicates that the object is likely made of faience. This is because the firing temperature is not high enough to fully vitrify either the clay body or the glaze, leaving the ceramic slightly porous. By contrast, when the water remains on the surface without being absorbed, the fragment may be stoneware. Stoneware is fired at much higher temperatures – around 1,200°C (2,190°F) – which vitrify the clay, making it dense, non-porous, and waterproof.

The faience recovered during the excavations at Fort St. Joseph was imported directly from French manufactories. The eighteenth century represented the golden age of French faience production, with numerous workshops specializing in this type of pottery. Although it is difficult to determine the exact place of manufacture for the fragments found at the fort, historians know that a significant share of French faience was produced for export. North America and the Caribbean benefited from customs exemptions that encouraged the shipment of ceramic goods across the Atlantic.

- Victoire

¹according to the statements of Gwenaëlle Fellinger, curator of Islamic arts at the Louvre museum

²Rosen, Jean. « Chapitre 2. Céramique et faïence : une histoire de terre ». In La faïence en France du XIIIe au XIXe siècle. Dijon: ARTEHIS Éditions, 2021. 

Photo: samples of faience ceramic found at Fort St. Joseph. Credits to Emma Maher.