Three Museum Tourists Overlook: 2
Next on our unknown museum list is the Ceramic’s Museum. While avoided by most because of it out-of-the-way location and boring label, the Museu de Ceràmica has a lot to offer.
No. 2: Museu de Ceràmica
For those who appreciate the molding of mud to plate, the Museu de Ceramica’s walk through the evolution of clay art in Spain will be an interesting one. Not many people get over to the ceramic museum because of it way up-town location. It’s on Diagonal Street heading out of the city on a massive estate which used to belong to local royalty. The building where the collection is kept was a palace for the Pedralbes family, but converted into the current museum in 1990.
Within the museum’s collection are ceramics from Andalusia, Valencia, Aragon, Castilla, and Catalonia. In the exhibit visitors can take a look at pots from the 8th to the 15th century from Southern Spain, when the area was not Spanish at all. Of course, the pots, plates, jugs and tiles from this era are heavily influenced by Islamic art, with geometric designs quite different to ceramic art found in the north of the country.
There is also an interesting permanent exhibition of ceramics from Catalonia and specifically Barcelona. Here we find intricate plates depicting daily events in the city, such as people enjoying a ‘Chocolate festival’ in a metropolitan park (1700), and delicate tiles and platters with booty-loaded ships painted on them. Truly, these ceramics give a small history lesson, as their crude forms and decorative glazes become finer and rendered with more intricacy through the ages.
If all this wasn’t enough, the museum also offers occasional workshops and rotating modern ceramic exhibitions. While maybe not everyone’s museum of choice, those who know clay will appreciate Museu Ceràmica.
Address:
Palau Reial de Pedralbes
Av. Diagonal, 686
08034 Barcelona
Metro: Palau Reial (L3)
Bus: 7, 33, 63, 67, 68, 74, 75, 78, 113
Bus turístic: ruta nord