Maiolica in the Making

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, potters from the Italian village of Castelli dAbruzzo created wares that constitute a final, supremely pictorial phase of the tin-glazed earthenware art know as maiolica. Here, Catharine Hess documents the Gentili/Barabei archive--a recently acquired collection of 276 documents relating to these celebrated ceramics--to show how it illuminates the production of maiolica.