Manises plate; late 16th/early 17th century.

Manises dish; late sixteenth century / early seventeenth century.
Glazed ceramic.
It has a small hole on one side made to hang the piece.
Measurements: 31 cm (diameter).
Glazed ceramic dish with a hole in the center. It has a design composed of geometric and vegetal elements, the latter located on the outer perimeter. Lustre-painted ceramics will be the great art of the Nasrid period, although it was born in Almohad Spain between the second half of the 12th and the first half of the 13th century. It is a technique of Persian origin, the first documents referring to it being found in the year 1066, although no examples prior to the 12th century have come down to us. It is a glazed ceramic, that is to say, with a white glaze bath, very pure in the best examples, which is fired in the kiln. On it, already cold, it is decorated with a pigment composed of five basic ingredients: copper, silver, sulfur, almazarrón (iron oxide) and vinegar. The final tone will depend on the proportion of these components, resulting more golden if it has a greater amount of silver, and more reddish if copper predominates. Finally, the piece is fired a second time at 650ºC, in a reducing atmosphere, to fix the decoration. Once the piece is fired, the decoration is black, so it has to be burnished to obtain the final shiny metallic gold tone. During the Nasrid period, between the 13th and 15th centuries, in the luster pieces we will see all the ornamental repertoire of Hispano-Muslim ceramics: hand of Fatima, "ohm", knot, ataurique, epigraphy, vegetal motifs, scales, imbricated decorations, etc., always with compositions that fill the entire space, with a certain character of "horror vacui". As we see in this piece, in the following centuries the style will continue in Christian territory, maintaining the dense compositions and the linear, vegetal and geometric motifs, although elements that did not exist in Islamic art will be added, as is the case of the reliefs that are the protagonists of this plate.