The Wit and Whimsy of Victorian Majolica See all the exhibitions.

Among the products that debuted at Great Britain's landmark Great Universal Exhibition in 1851 was a line of ceramic ware imitating Renaissance works from France and I taly called majolica. The term was borrowed from the Italian word "maiolica," the name given to the pottery produced on the Spanish island of Majorca and imported to Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "The Wit and Whimsy of Victorian Majolica" features the intensely colored and elaborately modeled ceramics that caused an instant sensation, tapping into the Victorian interest in the natural world and delight in the ability to render nature in artistic forms.