Hand-painted pottery is earthenware or stoneware decorated by an artist applying colour with a brush, rather than by printed transfers, decals or stencils. The decoration may be painted onto the raw or biscuit body beneath the glaze, onto a tin glaze before firing, or over a fired glaze in enamel colours fixed by a further low-temperature firing.
Hand painting is one of the oldest forms of ceramic decoration and is found on Italian maiolica, Dutch and English delftware, French faience and countless regional and peasant wares. After transfer printing became widespread in the late eighteenth century, hand painting increasingly signalled a more individual or prestigious product, and it was revived with enthusiasm by the art potteries of the Victorian and Edwardian periods and by Art Deco makers in the 1920s and 1930s. To tell hand painting from printing, look for visible brushstrokes, slight variations between repeated motifs and colours that pool or thin naturally. Collectors value fluent, confident painting, artist's monograms or pattern numbers, and good glaze condition, while restoration, crazing and rubbing to enamel colours are common faults to check under good light.
