Crystallography matters ... more!

As part of the lecture series to celebrate the International Year of Crystallography at FCT-NOVA, on June 11, Dr Giuseppina Padeletti (Institute of Nanostructured Materials of CNR, Italy) will give a talk entitled "Significant findings on the Italian lustred majolica at Renaissance".

Here's a summary of her lecture: The characterization and the study of lustre-decorated majolicas is of great interest for archaeologists, but also offers possibilities for producing pottery with outstanding decoration today, following ancient examples, since nowadays Italian artisans are interested in the reproduction of the ancient recipes and procedures. The results of several studies carried out on ancient lustre layers using numerous different analytical techniques such as XRD, SEM–EDX, TEM–EDX–SAED, ETAAS, ICP–OES, UV–vis reflectance spectroscopy and SAXS will be presented. Lustre films were shown to be formed by copper and silver clusters of nanometric dimension. The color and the properties of the lustre films depend on the elemental composition of the impasto applied to the ceramic surface as well as on other factors like the metallic nanocluster dimension, the firing conditions, the underlying glaze composition and the procedure. Furthermore, by means of XRD was possible to discover markers, useful in the attribution of works of art to different civilizations.

Read the short biographies of all speakers of the FCT-NOVA lecture series at http://xtal.dq.fct.unl.pt/iycr2014/Speakers.html