Glaze - a film of fired colored or transparent glass - is a beautiful and durable decoration not only for a vase or fireplace, but also for the facade of a building. For two and a half thousand years of history of its use in architecture, colored glaze was either forgotten or, on the contrary, made it the main technique, covering all walls with glazed bricks or tiles, like a carpet, or economically encrusting buildings with attractive polychrome details. A beautiful and durable architectural glaze was and probably always will be a sign of a special craft quality, the almost fantastic possibilities of an "architectural painting" - and a slight conservatism, which, however, does not prevent modern architects from using it in their experiments. ***
The first example of glazed pottery is fragments of the firmament, a dome of glazed blue-blue tiles, found in the Josser step pyramid (built around 2560 BC). On the facades, however, glaze began to be used in Mesopotamia, two thousand years later. The famous Ishtar Gate and the walls of the Processional Road leading to it were covered with blue glazed bricks and decorated with colored bas-reliefs of lions, bulls and sirrusha - creatures with the head of a snake, the legs of a lion and a griffin. Built in 575 BC, during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II, they were found at the beginning of the 20th century by archaeologist Robert Koldewey and restored at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
The technology for the production of Babylonian glazed bricks was as follows: reliefs were carved on bricks, which were made by immersing the clay mass in special wooden molds. The dried bricks were covered with liquid glaze and fired in ovens. Blue, yellow and other colors were obtained by adding various metals to the colorless glaze. The glassy coating was bulky enough - 10 mm and so strong that the surface of the gate was preserved from damage and moisture over the centuries. Unfortunately, the legendary Tower of Babel was less fortunate, the mud bricks were washed away by floods and destroyed by time. However, the surviving fragments of the tower's sanctuary show that it was also decorated with sky-blue glazed ceramics.
Ceramists in the Middle East experimented not only with shades, but also with patterns and glazes. During the Abassid period, the second dynasty of Arab caliphs (750-1258), items with underglaze ornament began to appear. Craftsmen cut the pattern through a thin layer of liquid clay - engobe, which was applied before firing. Another way of decorating ceramics - the technique of polychrome overglaze luster painting was also invented in the East, in Syria, at the turn of the 8-9 centuries. Chandelier - a fusible colorful composition with a metallic golden or reddish sheen with iridescent effect, has become a favorite decoration of the facades of palaces and the interiors of the residences of Arab caliphs.
Tiled décor was popular in Islamic art from Central Asia to India, from Iran to Spain. The ornament, mixing with the Arabic script, covers the walls, arches and domes with a continuous thin patterned carpet, dematerializing the buildings and accentuating their main goal as carriers of the divine word and the image of the Garden of Eden - it is no coincidence that the turquoise color of heavenly glaze was popular. The Shakhi-Zinda necropolis in Samarkand was created by artists and architects whom the famous conqueror Tamerlane collected during his campaigns.
For a long time, the main type of decorative architectural ceramics was glazed face clay brick. But in the XII century, the so-called frit porcelain appeared. The basis of its composition was frit - a mixture of sand, soda, potash, saltpeter and quartz; clays were added surprisingly little, only 10-20% of the total mass. This type of glazed pottery was especially common in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Anatolia (and later in Europe). And he gained wide fame thanks to ceramic artists from the Turkish city of Iznik, who created magnificent white-blue, and then polychrome "Iznik porcelain".
Impressed by the ceramics of the East, but not knowing its secret, the Europeans had to create their own production methods. So in the 15th century majolica appeared (the name of which comes from the island of Mallorca, from where the ceramics of Iranian masters came to the Europeans). Italian majolica is tiles made of white or gray clay, the porous shard of which is covered with two layers of glaze. The first layer, opaque, with a high tin content, made it possible to paint the surface with bright colors on its damp background. Then a transparent layer of lead glaze was applied and fired at a temperature of one thousand degrees. The technology was very similar to that used in the East for the manufacture of frit porcelain, but it was still invented independently. Its best examples are the colored reliefs of the Florentine Luca delo Robbia.
Russian architecture began acquaintance with colored glaze with glazed tiles, which lined the floors in churches, and glazed "anthracite" (that is, green, like grass, copper oxides were used to obtain such a color) roof tiles. The first example of colored tiles on the facades - Borisoglebskaya (Kolozhskaya) church of the end of the 12th century in Grodno (now Belarus), remained a rarity, since the development of glazed decor begins only in the late Middle Ages - and it is possible that a love for decorative ceramics was instilled in the 16th century Italian masters. One way or another, fragments of ceramic decorative cornices with transparent golden glaze and completely Renaissance Northern Italian decor were found during the study of the Grand Ducal Palace, built for Ivan III by the Italian Aloisio da Carezano. The Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat (better known to tourists as "St. Basil's Cathedral") is decorated with glazed ceramic tiles and glazed ceramic balls; We meet a similar decor on the tents of the (unpreserved) church of the Trinity courtyard in the Kremlin and the Church of the Intercession in Medvedkovo, built in the patrimony of the liberator of Moscow, Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, in the 1630s. For the rest, Russian churches of the first half of the 17th century were decorated abundantly, but as a rule with stove tiles, whose deep hollow rump perfectly fit into the mass of brickwork. Ant, yellow, and also red (without glaze) tiles were often equipped with an image of a double-headed eagle or floral designs, but sometimes - as, for example, in the churches of Zosima and Savvaty Trinity-Sergius Lavra - scenes of battles appear there, albeit small and not very skillfully executed.
The real flourishing of tiled decor in Russian architecture begins with the period of the Patriarchate of Nikon, who called for the implementation of his ambitious, as they would say now, projects, Polish and Belarusian masters. A native of Lithuania, Peter Zaborsky, and a Belarusian, Stepan Ivanov (Polubes), worked in the new ceramic workshops in Valdai and Istra. In New Jerusalem, they created five order tiled iconostases, window frames, ceramic portals, decorative belts, and inscriptions. After the deposition of Nikon, Pyotr Zaborsky continued to work in a workshop in Istra, and Ivanov-Polubes and Maksimov moved to Moscow, where from then until the time of Peter the Great, polychrome tiled decor became especially popular.
Krutitsky Teremok is one of the masterpieces of Russian tile decor, completely, including walls, decorative columns, window frames, covered with multicolored ceramics created in the workshop of Stepan Ivanov. In total, about two thousand tiles were required for Teremka (in fact, this is the monastery's holy gates).
In the 18th century, facade ceramics lost popularity, but returned with triumph two hundred years later to become one of the brightest techniques of the Art Nouveau style (Art Nouveau, Secession, etc. - love for majolica was characteristic of its various trends in almost all European countries). Modern is not limited to ceramic inserts, creating giant colored relief panels. In Russia, sketches for many of them were made by Mikhail Vrubel, he also experimented with majolica in his workshop in Abramtsevo.
In Spain, as you know, Antonio Gaudi was fond of colored facade ceramics, who also used it everywhere, from the facade to the bench. In the famous Casa Vicens, Gaudí uses ceramics to “reveal” a relief pattern covering the building like an openwork cape (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ishot71/6279915944/). Using tiles, the architect managed to breathe life into the most commonplace apartment building (Casa Batlló (1904-1906), which, with the help of new decoration, turned into a "giant stone dragon".
In addition to majolica, glazed bricks and glazed tiles get a new life during the Art Nouveau period - a material previously forgotten for a long time, but here, among other things, thanks to new factory technologies, it showed all its advantageous sides. It was glazed tiles that provided many buildings of the early 20th century with a noble glossy shine and extended the life of their facades, which are easily recognizable on any of the European streets.
Later, in the 20th century, the technology for the production of glazed bricks continued to develop, although it was inferior in popularity to the fashionable metal and concrete. Nowadays, glazed ceramics is becoming more and more popular - not only in light of the gravitation of modern architecture to a lighter version of restrained conservatism, but also - thanks to the new possibilities for experimenting with form, which this ancient, reliable, but not outdated decorative material opens up.
A large assortment of modern glazed bricks of English and European production, including glazed brick gussets for complex projects, can be ordered from Kirill on Begovaya.
