Why Wild, Wonderful Majolica Is Exactly What You Should Be Collecting Right Now
It s like taking a fantastical ride down a Victorian rabbit hole. Meg Lukens Noonan Courtesy of Linda Horn
In frock coats and hoop skirts, eager throngs packed London’s Crystal Palace, a cavernous glass-and-iron hall, to view the wonders of industry and design on display at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Among the marvels at that first-ever world’s fair (folding pianos, expanding hearses, and giant steam-powered hammers) were several pieces of colorful pottery produced by Minton & Co., one of England’s leading ceramics manufacturers. Herbert Minton’s vivid lead-based glazes and inventive three-dimensional designs stood in dazzling contrast to the drab houseware widely used in middle-class homes at the time. That it was also affordable made the luminous earthenware soon to be known as