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Isabela Polychrome Plate

Ceramic plates decorated with blue and manganese purple linear decorations, such as this one, were produced between the second half of the 15th and first half of the 16th centuries, during Gibraltar’s Spanish period. Although produced in the pottery factories of Triana in Seville, the style is known as ??????? ?????????? after the first colony in the Americas - ?? ??????? on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (now in the Dominican Republic) - where it was first described.

Given its decorative motifs – with decorations from the Mudejar repertoire such as the stylized double lines representing floral elements known as ???????, in this particular case in very simplified form – we can date this plate to between the late 15th and early 16th centuries. This was the style of plates, with blue and purple decorations, which began to be exported to the first colonies in the Americas.

We discovered this plate while carrying out an archaeological excavation in front of the Cathedral of St. Mary the Crowned whilst taking advantage of the works being carried out to pedestrianise Main Street in the 1990s. The plate was found inside a well and it helped us place its chronology in moments prior to the construction of the gothic church (then known as the ??????? ?? ????? ????́? ?? ???????? ? ??? ????????) during the reign of the Spanish Catholic monarchs.


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18-20 Bomb House Lane
PO Box 939,
Gibraltar