In this work recently produced and commercially available glazed ceramic object with metallic lustre decoration was studied by using a spectroscopic ellipsometer with rotating compensator. The thickness and metal content of the surface lustre layers are determined by ion beam analytical techniques, i.e., Rutherford backscattering spectrometry and external beam particle-induced X-ray emission and the results were utilized in the construction of multilayer optical models for the evaluation and interpretation of the spectroellipsometric measurements. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.