6533b7d6fe1ef96bd1266da8

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Evidence of tin-glazed earthenware technique experimenting in Brittany

subject

description

International audience; In France, during the medieval period, tin-glazed earthenware technique is neither defined nor implanted nor named and its expression appears essentially in the form of floor tiles. The decorated tile pavement found in place in the chapel extra muros at the Dukes of Suscinio castle (France, Morbihan, Sarzeau) is symptomatic of this. Its study comes within the context of a wider pluridisciplinary research dedicated to a better knowledge of tin-glazed earthenware technique transmission and ways of diffusion in France.Precisely dated from the years 1330-1350, remarkable in the variety of the ceramic techniques employed as well as the iconographic repertoire, this decorated tile pavement is the only example identified in Brittany so far. The exogenous tin-glazed earthenware technique coexists with bi-colored decorated tiles, a medieval innovation and a North-Western European cultural specificity. This decorated tile pavement is thus a cultural and technical point of junction between East and West.In spite of previous technical and stylistic studies, the manufacturing of these tiles still raises various questions. Where do they come from? Who made them ? Were they produced in a single workshop ? The physico-chemical characterization (petrography, cathodoluminescence, SEM-EDS, XRD) of a representative sampling collection of the different ceramic techniques used, with the help of the Council of Morbihan, enabled us to verify if the same clays were used, if they can have a local origin and if the different ways they were prepared are similar. The purpose was to estimate homogeneity in the production and to determine the technological transmission mode.After studying the characterization of the different floor tile components (decoration / glaze / earthenware), whatever the technique used, we can assert that it is the production of a single workshop, very certainly indigenous, probably of tilers using the resources locally available, whose similarities to Breton ceramic suggests a regional production. In this context the tin-glazed earthenware technique appears experimental.