From Wikipedia: Faience or faïence is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed pottery on a delicate pale buff body, associated with Faenza in northern Italy. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major advance in the history of pottery. The invention seems to have been made in Iran or the Middle East before the ninth century. A kiln capable of producing temperatures exceeding 1,000 °C (1,830 °F) was required to achieve this result (see pottery), the result of millennia of refined pottery-making traditions. Technically, lead-glazed earthenware, such as the French sixteenth-century Saint-Porchaire ware, does not properly qualify as faience, but the distinction is not usually maintained. Fayence ist die von der italienischen Stadt Faenza abgeleitete französische Bezeichnung für eine Keramik mit porösem Scherben, die mit einer deckenden weißen oder farbigen Zinnglasur überzogen wird und meist mit Unterglasurfarben oder Muffelfarben dekoriert und mehrmals gebrannt wird.