Portuguese tin-glazed earthenware from the 16th century: A spectroscopic characterization of pigments, glazes and pastes

Abstract Sherds representative of the Portuguese faience production of the early-16th century from the “Mata da Machada” kiln and from an archaeological excavation on a small urban site in the city of Aveiro (from late 15th to early 16th century) were studied with the use of non-invasive spectroscopies, namely: ground state diffuse reflectance absorption (GSDR), micro-Raman, Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) and proton induced X-ray (PIXE). These results were compared with the ones obtained for two Spanish productions, from Valencia and Seville, both from same period (late 15th century and 16th century), since it is well know that Portugal imported significant quantities of those goods from Spain at that time. The obtained results evidence a clear similarity in the micro-Raman spectrum in the glaze and clays of Portuguese pottery produced at “Mata da Machada” and sherds found at the mediaeval house of Homem Cristo Filho (HCF) street at Aveiro. The blue pigment in the sample from the household of Aveiro is a cobalt oxide that exists in the silicate glassy matrix in small amounts, which did not allow the formation of detectable cobalt silicate microcrystals. White glaze from Mata da Machada and Aveiro evidence tin oxide micro-Raman signatures superimposed on the bending and stretching bands of SiO2. All these are quite different from the Spanish products under study (Seville and Valencia), pointing to an earlier production of tin glaze earthenware in Portugal than the mid 16th century, as commonly assumed.