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The third type of ware of the early Islamic period was the slip-painted.
Since the painted design easily runs under a lead glaze or over a tine glaze, potters of
north eastern Iran and Central Asia discovered that, if they mixed the pigment and the glaze
with some clay, the decoration would not run and be affected by the fire. Accordingly, they
were able to produce more varied and refined designs on their pottery vessels. There are
several types of these slip-painted wares. Some, which are painted in black (actually it only
looks black, the colour is manganese-purple), show inscriptions in various styles of Arabic
script. The Rajab Museum has several of these black-on-white wares
4(20k)
. Others are painted in
polychrome on the white or creamy-yellow surface. One of them, a large bowl in the collection,
is decorated with an inscription in the Kufic style and gives the date of the vessel as 300
A.H./A.D. 912 5(23k)
.
Others are painted in polychrome, but on a coloured surface, most of them
with figural decoration 6(22k)
.
There are vessels on which the white and tomato-red design appears
against a coloured background 7(20k)
.
An interesting group is when the surface is dominated by
yellowish-black; these are called yellow-stained-black wares
8(27k)
. Another, somewhat rare type
is the vessel imitating polychrome lustre decoration, using even the traditional designs of
this particular ware. Slip-painted pottery was produced in several places, but in particular
at two major centres: Nishapur in north eastern Iran and Samarkand in Central Asia.
By the eleventh century an almost revolutionary progress was made in Islamic
pottery; a new type of body material was introduced: composite white ware, a king of faience.
Although faience was known and used much earlier (in fact as early as the second millennium B.C.
in Pharaonic Egypt), it was nevertheless forgotten and had to be re-invented, and produced in
a somewhat different way. Containing ground quartz, clay and a mixture of glaze could be
applied. Under or over the alkaline glaze any type of sophisticated decoration could be
painted. By the time in the eleventh century this new composite white material was introduced,
first of all in Iran, the Seljuqs were in power. They ruled over Iran, Anatolia, Iraq and for
a while also in Syria. Due to this, the new types of wares were called, we may add wrongly,
Seljuq fine wares.
These Seljuq fine wares may be divided into several sub-groups. Those which
are coated with a colourless alkaline glaze (Seljuq white wares), which may be plain, while
others may have been decorated with carved, incised or perforated designs, occasionally with
touches of cobalt-blue painting
10(12k)
. Again, other vessels have a coloured alkaline glaze
coating. The colours ranged from various shades of green, blue, turquoise, to yellow and
manganese. Ewers, jugs, bowls and different type of tiles were coated with these coloured
alkaline glazes 9(21k)
.
Another important group is the silhouette ware, when the surfaces of the
vessels were coated with thick black slip and then the decoration was carved out with a sharp
tool 11(21k)
.
Perhaps it was from these silhouette wares that underglaze painting developed. The
underglaze-painted wares fall into two types: those where the decoration is painted in two or
three colours (cobalt-blue, black, and turquoise, occasionally brownish-red) under a clear,
colourless transparent glaze, and those where the design is only in black, or rarely also in
blue under a coloured glaze
12(20k)
.
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