Bowl. Culture: Spanish, Talavera de la Reina. Dimensions: Diameter: 21 1/4 in. (54 cm). Date: ca. 1625-50.During the course of the sixteenth century a number of potteries making tin-enameled earthenware came into existence in Talavera de la Reina, a small town some sixty miles southwest of Madrid. The town supplied plain wares that were greatly admired for the beauty of their white surface--the "bianco"--and others that were decorated in a subdued palette of high-temperature greens, yellows, browns, blues, and purples.This jar and bowl (1983.469.1, .2) come from a pottery, so far unidentified by name, that seems to have obtained important orders over a fairly long period in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The characteristics of the factory are well exemplified in these objects: a fine bianco; a very beautiful blue--skillfully modulated from light to deep shades--that predominated in the early and mid-16oos; and an energetic freedom in the use of the brush point to dra