Barcelona - Ceramic Museum Museu de Ceràmica

On the second floor will be found the Department of Contemporary Ceramic Art, some with traditional and epigonic (more modern) decoration based on old patterns, but mainly avant-garde. The spacious cabinets in the last room contain works by Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. Temporary exhibitions are also held on this floor.

The Historical Department can be found on the first floor of the palace. In Room 1 are ceramics from the Islamic-Spanish culture group. Rooms 2-5 house a large number of pieces manufactured in Valencia up to the 18th C. (strong Moorish influence; some in metallic-effect glaze). Room 3 also contains monochrome blue tiles, some with graphic decoration (animals and human beings), religious symbols, coats-of-arms and guild- marks; Room 5 also has some examples of glazing to produce a metallic effect.

Room 6 contains works from Talavera de la Reina (now the province of Toledo) and Puente del Arzobispo, dating from the Renaissance to the 19th C. The decoration is partly blue monochrome, partly multi-colored (animals, human beings, scenes from everyday life).

Pieces from the ceramic centers of Aragón (from the 13th C. onwards) are displayed in Rooms 7 and 8. Room 7 contains partly monochrome, partly green and blue china; on the wall will be found a description of the technique used to achieve the color effect (green being copper oxide, brown manganese oxide and blue cobalt compounds). Room 8 houses monochrome and blue- green vessels, some with subjective, some with purely ornamental motifs; a display cabinet on the wall contains various stoops.

From Catalonia, always the producer of important ceramics, come the items displayed in Rooms 9-11. In Room 10 are polychrome table-ware and decorative china; particularly impressive are the two large pictures in glazed tiles depicting a bull-fight and a banquet in a large middle-class house. The semi-circular Room 11 is noted for its display of glazed tiles showing skilled craftsmen at work as well as animal and everyday scenes. The Islamic tradition lingered long in Seville in particular, even until the Renaissance (Room 12). In the glass display cabinets on the walls can be seen some long friezes portraying a complete historical story.

In Alcora (now the province of Castellón de la Plana) a new factory was built in 1727 to manufacture European-type goods (Rooms 13 and 14).

Polychrome china from Valencia (19th C.), predominantly the popular decorated tiles known as "azulejos" (from the Arabic "az-zuleyche" = mosaic, not - as once assumed - from the Spanish "azul", meaning blue), is exhibited in Room 15.