We shall not encumber our pages with conjectural or vague hints as to the processes of these interesting fabrics. Iridescent lustre obliquely reflected, and a white glaze of dazzling transparency, were the objects respectively aimed at. The former was attained by preparations of lead, copper, silver, and gold; the latter was imparted by dipping the half-baked pottery into a white varnish, over which, while moist, the subject was rapidly painted, correction or retouching being incompatible with the immediate absorption of its colours, which, apart from accidental fusion of tints, and flaws in the furnace, abundantly accounts for the frequent inaccuracy of design. The metallic lustre depended a good deal on lead, the whiteness on a free use of tin. Those early plates of Pesaro were very rarely signed by their artists; but one in the Hague Museum bears a cipher resembling C.H.O.N., whilst another, quoted by Pungileoni, has a mark composed of G.A.T. interlaced. In 1478, Sixtus IV. wrote his acknowledgments to Costanzo Sforza for a present of "_Vasa fictilia_, most elegantly wrought, which, for the donor's sake, are prized as if of gold or silver rather than of earthenware."[243] In a similar letter, Lorenzo the Magnificent thanked [Roberto] Malatesta, observing that "they please me entirely by their perfections and rarity, being quite novelties in these parts, and are valued more than if of silver," the donor's arms serving daily to recall their origin.[244] Passeri gives a curious proclamation by the Lord of Pesaro, in 1486, narrating that, for good favour to the citizens, and considering a fabric of earthen vases to have been of old practised in that city, superior, by general admission, to all others produced in Italy, and that there were now more workshops than ever,--importation of any species thereof from foreign parts was prohibited, on pain of confiscation and fine, half to the informer, oil and water jars only excepted; and further that, within eight days, all foreign vases should be sent out of the state. In 1510, majolica was numbered among the trades of Pesaro, and in 1532, Duke Francesco Maria confirmed the protection for it which we have just cited. I have not met with the patent for "application of gold to Italian faience," quoted by Mr. H. Rogers as granted, in 1509, to Giacomo Lanfranco of Pesaro, by Duke Guidobaldo, who, by the way, was then dead. [Footnote 243: Archiv. Dipl. Urbinate at Florence [1845].] [Footnote 244: GAYE, _Carteggio_, I., p. 304. He was probably Roberto Malatesta, who served the Florentines in 1479, and died 1482; so Gaye's date of 1490 seems erroneous.]