Medieval, blue-on-white, Nasrid ceramics

Pieces decorated in this manner are few and far between in Gibraltar, but today we bring you two of them. One is a fragment of a plate found during the archaeological excavations in Main Street, in front of the Cathedral of St. Mary the Crowned in 1995. It is a fragment from the bottom of the plate with a foot-ring. The inside of the plate has sinuous blue vegetal motifs representing plant stems.

The other fragment belongs to a globular jug painted with vertical blue motifs. This was found during the archaeological excavations in the garden of the Gibraltar National Museum in the late 1990s.

This type of ceramic is attributed to workshops most likely in the area of Malaga, although a Granada origin should not be ruled out, and it is dated in Gibraltar to the 14th and 15th centuries. Although so far not recorded in Gibraltar, some of these ceramics were also decorated with gold strokes, blue and gold pottery being an important element of luxury tableware in this period.