IV Craft, clay and kiln · Plate 020
Brush decoration
Painting with slip or oxide pigments is done in a few confident strokes with a soft brush. A skilled hand repeats the same stroke across many pieces.
Barcelos decoration on glazed red ware is painted in white engobe on pieces that are properly dry, before glazing. It can be simple, lines combined with dots that reproduce the motifs used in incision. Worked more elaborately, these become the chevron, a series of closed motifs filled with small dots. Curved lines alternating with straight ones, or forming waves, decorate the belly and neck. More careful work uses single or double bands or floral arrangements, and over time these elements combine with icons of Minho popular culture: hearts, verses, keys and fish, among others.
The tools are modest and each has a name: the pica, the canudo, the pena de galinha (a chicken feather), the listradeira, the meia cana, and marcadeiras of several shapes, among them a rounded three-petal floreira, an angular three-petal floreira, a double rounded floreira, a straight marcadeira, a crooked one and simple ones. After painting, the pieces are set to dry again, this time to dry the engobe, and only afterwards are they glazed. The glaze most used in traditional Barcelos pottery is the transparent glossy one.
This is a general description, not confirmed to a single source.
Source: cearte.pt
AI-generated illustration in the manner of the tradition, not a photograph of a specific object.
