In August 2025 I had the great opportunity to meet Dr. Alena Kalinová, Curator of Folk Art (Ceramic and Glass) at the Ethnographic Institute of the Moravian Museum in Brno, Czech Republic. She gave me access to the vaults in the museum and the opportunity to handle and photograph some of the Anabaptist/Haban and related folk-art pieces in their vast collection of 7,000 objects. Among the forms I saw and was allowed to handle were several examples of marbled ware. Since then I have been inspired to “crack the code” on the marbling techniques used by the Anabaptist/Haban potters. Their methods were proprietary, secret, and remain unpublished. I’m working to reverse-engineer their methods for application in my own practice, and through my research and experimentation make discoveries that I will eventually exhibit and also share through an open-source database funded by SSHRC Canada.
The marbled component of the Anabaptist/Haban ceramics output was overall extraordinary. It provided an outlet for greater freedom and whimsy for the potters, who were restricted by the Book of Ordinances in which the community elders decreed what forms, colours, and imagery could be used on the ceramic objects the artists made. The marbled forms are among the most playful in the Anabaptist/Haban repertoire and reveal a spirit of innovation, spontaneity, and defiance.
The Anabaptist/Haban potters perfected the marbling technique, starting with blue and white, sometimes using clay slip with clear glaze, but primarily white maiolica glaze provided the base for marbled blue overglaze stains. At first the Anabaptist/Haban artists adhered to the blue-and-white palette, employing cobalt-based colour in a range from light blue to dark blue. Blue was marbled onto white maiolica, but sometimes white stain was marbled on top of medium and deep blue maiolica glaze. There are stunning historical examples, primarily found in Europe, of the beautiful blue-and-white swirled marbled surfaces appearing on jugs, plates, cups, and plates or scalloped chargers called crespinas. What is sometimes termed “marbling” in ceramic art history books, looks more like splashing, stippling, or dripping stains on top of white or coloured maiolica glaze – at times it looks like all of these techniques were used on the same piece – but it is the unique approach to marbling that prevails.
Eventually other colours crept into the historical marbling process, including a deep manganese purple maiolica glaze with marbled white stain. In Slovakia green overglaze stain (made using copper carbonate) also makes an appearance on white maiolica as a marbled surface. Below you’ll see a number of examples of maiolica forms I was able to handle at the Ethnographic Institute of the Moravian Museum in Brno, Czechia, letting me examine objects closely from rim to foot, allowing for access to the interior and exterior of each form. For ceramic artists it is also critical to be able to inspect the bottom of a ceramic piece. Looking at the bottoms of pots shows us the type and colour of clay used and tells us whether the marbling exists on the surface of the piece only (overglaze colour applied onto unfired maiolica glaze), or is it marbling on the raw clay surface with coloured slip, or is it mixing different coloured clays in the throwing process itself?
Photographs below taken by Michael Zajac and Grace Nickel of pieces in the collection at the Ethnographic Institute of the Moravian Museum in Brno, CZ. We are grateful for the expertise of Alena Kalinová, Curator of Folk Art (Ceramic and Glass) at the Ethnographic Institute of the Moravian Museum, and for her warm welcome and generosity in guiding us through the museum vaults.
Click on top right corner of each image to enlarge.
- Alena Kalinová. “The Collection of Anabaptist (Hutterite) Ceramics in the Moravian Museum in Brno,” Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 60 (2), pp. 371–386 (2015). PDF. DOI: 10.1556/022.2015.60.2.8.
- Alena Kalinová. Novokřtěnská, habánská a posthabánská fajáns v Moravském zemském muzeu (1600–1765) [Anabaptist, Haban and Post-Haban Faience in the Moravian Museum (1600–1765)]. Moravské zemské muzeum, 2017.
Small jug, c. 1680, western Slovakia. Moravian Museum, Brno, KER 24687.
Love this research Grace. I thought perhaps there was some referencing to marbled stone so popular as ornaments- especially in th UK – I have to have another look at the pieces in the Koerner collection