Faience is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed earthenware on a delicate pale buff body. The name is simply the French name for Faenza, in the Romagna near Ravenna, where a valued painted ware on a clean, opaque pure white ground, called majolica, was produced for export as early as the 15th century. "Majolica" (or "maiolica") itself is a garbled version of "Maiorica," for the island of Majorca was a transhipping point for refined Spanish tin-glazed earthenwares being shipped to Italy from the kingdom of Aragon at the close of the middle ages, the Spanish pottery tradition itself a Moorish inheritance.
Delftware is a kind of faience, made at potteries round Delft in Holland, characteristically decorated in blue on white, in imitation of the blue-and-white porcelain that began coming from China from the early 16th century, but quickly developing its own recognizably Dutch decor.
In France, centers of faience manufacturing developed from the early 18th century at Rouen and Strasbourg.
The term "faience" has been extended to include finely-glazed ceramic beads found in ancient Egypt or in the Indus Valley Civilization.
