The Renaissance reimagined: Minton, Majolica, and Maiolica

From about 1850, the Renaissance Revival inspired the design of both architecture and the decorative arts in Britain, prompting Minton & Co. to bring the arts of the Renaissance to the Staffordshire potteries. Within the context of its ongoing use of historical examples, the firm successfully adopted and adapted Renaissance decorative sources in particular. This took the form of a subgroup of revivalist ware that, produced from the 1850s to the 1870s, took its initial inspiration from Italian Renaissance maiolica. This chapter focuses on Thomas Kirkby (1824-1890), one of Minton’s pottery painters, and explores how, at a time of great investment in design education and the birth of the national collections of decorative arts, he produced wares for Minton that reimagined the Italian Renaissance.