PERSIAN, DAMASCUS, AND RHODIAN WARES.
In a previous chapter we have traced the origin or parentage of this
section of wares to the glazed pottery and artificial semi-porcelain of
Egypt, and we have seen that in Assyria and at Babylon siliceous glazed
tiles were used for wall decoration. Whether in Persia and in India a
similar manufacture existed at that early period we have at present no
exact knowledge, but we are told by the Count Julien de Rochchouart in
his interesting “Souvenirs d’un voyage en Perse” that he possesses a
brick glazed of dark blue colour, with cuneiform characters in white,
which was found among the ruins of the ancient city of Kirman. The
mosques of the 12th century in that country, particularly that at
Natinz, are covered with glazed tiles of the most perfect workmanship
and artistic excellence, with coloured and lustred decoration. Later
examples--of the earlier years of the 17th century--specimens of which
are in the Kensington museum are also beautiful, and the fashion, though
in a degenerate form, is revived in that country at the present day. The
piece of glazed pottery supposed to have been of ancient Hebrew origin
and now preserved in the Louvre is also of this nature, and it is
suggested by M. Jacquemart that the Israelites may have acquired the art
in Egypt.
The varieties of pottery known under the names of Persian, Damascus,
Rhodian, and Lindus wares, composing a large family, may be classified
as _siliceous or glass-glazed_ wares. The leading characteristics are--
1. A paste composed of a sandy and a white argillaceous earth, and
some alkali or flux, greatly varying in their relative proportions,
and producing degrees of fineness and hardness from a coarse sandy
earthenware to a semi-vitrified translucent body, the latter being
in fact a kind of porcelain of artificial paste.
2. A glaze formed as a true glass, of siliceous sand and an alkali
(potash or soda), with the addition in some cases of a small
quantity of oxide of lead or other flux.
Such is the general, but by no means the constant, definition of the
component ingredients of all the varieties rightly classed together as
members of this group, for there can be no doubt that great variations
occurred in their composition at different periods and places, and some
examples of the finer kinds of Persian, Arabian, and perhaps of Damascus
wares are met with in, or under, the glaze of which the oxide of tin has
been used to produce a white and more even surface.
A large amount of information about Persian ware is conveyed to us in
the work of the comte de Rochchouart who, during a residence of some
years in Persia, gave great attention to its ceramic productions of
former and of present times. After establishing the fact of the former
production of at least four distinct kinds of Kaolinic porcelain, he
minutely describes ancient varieties of faience of which the polychrome
pieces are the more rare, the blue and white less so; he mentions one
uncommon variety, believed to have been made at Cachan, as having a
paste of red earth covered with a stanniferous enamel of great beauty,
and painted in cobalt under a glaze highly baked; they ring like metal.
We do not recollect having seen an example of this variety. Marks
imitating those on Chinese porcelain occur on pieces painted in cobalt
blue on white. He further tells us that the ancient faience of Persia is
as admirable as the modern is detestable, notwithstanding it retains a
degree of oriental elegance. The industry at present is carried on at
Nahinna; at Natinz, where pottery has been made for some hundred years,
and where some of the finest was produced but now inferior; at Cachan,
turquoise blue, and many-coloured; while Hamadan, Kaswine and Teheran
make inferior wares, the latter being the worst.
We do not derive any information from M. de Rochchouart on the subject
of the lustred wares, except in his description of the tiles of the
mosque of Natinz of the 12th century; nor do we learn anything of that
variety of creamy white pottery having the sides pierced through the
paste but filled with the translucent glaze, and which is believed to be
the Gombrōn ware of Horace Walpole’s day. But he gives interesting
information on the subject of the tiles used for decoration, of which
the finest are those mentioned above; those of Ispahan and of the period
of Shah Abbas (1585-1629) being also admirable for their exquisite
design.
The Persian glazed pottery known to us may be divided into:
A. Wares, generally highly baked, and sometimes semi-translucent.
Paste, fine and rather thin, decorated with ruby, brown, and
coppery lustre, on dark blue and creamy white ground. Engraved p.
68 is a very curious and characteristic example: unfortunately
imperfect. It is in the Kensington collection.
B. Wares, of fine paste, highly baked, semi-translucent, of creamy
colour and rich clear glaze, running into tears beneath the piece
of a pale sea-green tint. Its characteristic decoration consisting
of holes pierced through the paste, and filled in with the
transparent glaze: the raised centres, &c. are bordered with a
chocolate brown or blue leafage, slightly used. This is supposed to
be the Gombrōn ware.
C. Wares, frequently of fine paste, and highly baked to
semi-transparency: the ground white; decoration of plants and
animals, sometimes after the Chinese, in bright cobalt blue, the
outlines frequently drawn in manganese; some
[Illustration]
pieces with reliefs and imitation Chinese marks also occur; this
variety is perhaps more recent than the others.
We assign the name DAMASCUS as the chief centre of a large class of
wares which were also made, in all probability, in Egypt, Turkey, Syria,
Asia Minor, &c., and among which pieces of Persian manufacture may be
included from our want of exact knowledge of their technical
differences; a certain general character pertaining to the whole class.
There can be no doubt that Damascus was an important producer of this
pottery, which was known to the commerce of the 16th century as “Damas”
ware, and we have examples, in silver mountings, of the period of queen
Elizabeth. It would be well, therefore, to revive the term “Damas” or
“Damascus ware” for this family, of which the true Damascus and Rhodian
are only local varieties, in preference to the misapplied general name
of “Persian,” by which they have been known.
The paste varies in quality more than in kind, being of a grey white
colour and sandy consistence, analogous to that of the Persian wares.
The decoration is more generally rich in colour, the ground white, blue,
turquoise, tobacco colour, and lilac, sometimes covered with scale work,
with panels of oriental form or leafage, large sprays of flowers,
particularly roses, tulips, hyacinths, carnations, &c., the colours used
being a rich blue, turquoise, green, purple, yellow, red, black. The
forms are elegant; large bowls on raised feet, flasks or bottles
bulb-shaped with elongated necks; pear-shaped jugs with cylindrical
necks and loop-handle; circular dishes or plates with deep centres, &c.
An interesting example of the highest quality of this ware is in the
writer’s possession, and is described and figured in colour in vol.
xlii. of the “Archæologia.” It is a hanging lamp made for and obtained
from the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, signed and dated June 1549.
Two leading varieties are known in collections: namely, _Damascus
proper_; known by its evenness of surface and rich glaze with subdued
but harmonious colouring, certain tones of which are peculiar to this
variety; for example, a dull lilac or purple, replacing the embossed red
so conspicuous on the Rhodian, and used against blue, which is of two or
three shades, the turquoise being frequently placed against the darker
tone; a sage green is also characteristic. The dishes of this variety
usually have the outer edge shaped in alternating ogee.
This kind is much more uncommon than the other, RHODIAN or LINDUS, to
which the greater number of pieces known in collections as “Persian
ware” belong. It is to Mr. Salzmann that we owe the discovery of the
remains of ancient furnaces at Lindus, in the island of Rhodes, from the
old palaces of which he collected numerous examples. This variety,
although extremely beautiful, is generally coarser than the former, and
the decoration
[Illustration]
more marked and brilliant. A bright red pigment, so thickly laid on as
to stand out in relief upon the surface of the piece, is very
characteristic and in many cases is a colour of great beauty; the
predominant decoration of the plates consists of two or three sprays of
roses, pinks, hyacinths, and tulips, and leaves, sometimes tied together
(as in the woodcut) at the stem and spreading over the entire surface of
the piece in graceful lines; the border frequently of black and blue
scroll work. Ships, birds, and animals, are also depicted; and a shield
of arms occurs on some pieces.
[Illustration]
Another very distinct and perhaps more recent class, the ANATOLIAN,
consists of those wares frequently found in collections, as cups and
saucers, sprinklers, perfume vases, covered bowls, and the like,
generally pieces of small size. The ground is usually white, sometimes
incised with cross lines by means of a piece of wood scratching the soft
paste, with a gay decoration of many colours, among which a brilliant
yellow is conspicuous in scale work, lattice and diaper patterns,
flowers, &c. Its glaze is frequently not brilliant, but rather rough on
the surface; but the pieces are well baked. This variety is ascribed to
the fabrique of Kutahia in Anatolia.
There is yet another variety of this section which is somewhat
exceptional, approaching as it does in composition to the first division
of the Persian wares, and on the other hand to the decoration of the
earlier pieces of the Hispano-moresque. It is composed of a sandy paste
of the kind general to this section, and is decorated either in black
outline relieved or filled in with blue painted directly on the paste,
and covered by a thick translucent glaze of a creamy tone, running into
tears at the bottom of the piece; or glazed entirely with a translucent
dark blue glass, over which the decoration is painted in a rich lustre
colour, varying between the golden and ruby tints of the Italian
Majolica, and differing considerably from those upon the
Hispano-moresque wares.
We give on the preceding page three or four marks from various pieces of
Persian or rather “Damascus” ware.
Before we pass to another class, it may be well again to direct the
reader’s attention to that important application of glazed oriental
pottery, already referred to, and which has been in use more or less
throughout the east from a period of remote antiquity. Indeed, there is
perhaps no instance in which the superiority of oriental taste in
surface decoration is more distinctly shown than in the use of
enamelled, or more properly speaking, siliceous glazed tiles, as a
covering for external and internal wall space. We have already seen how
fragments of such embellishments have been yielded by the ruins of
Assyria and Babylon, by Arabia in the seventh, and Persia in the twelfth
century; and Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Constantinople still have
brilliant examples of this exercise of the potter’s art.
The distressing state of ruin or neglect into which many of the tombs
and mosques, so beautified, have been reduced or permitted to fall
greatly detracts from their effect, although not without its charm to
the painter’s eye and it is refreshing to see them, as at
Constantinople, in a somewhat better state of preservation. In that city
there is excellent work of this kind in the old palace of the Seraglio,
where the writer noticed tiles remarkable for their size and for the
perfection of their manufacture. Some of these, nearly two feet square,
are covered with the most elegant arabesque diapering of foliage and
flowers intertwined, among which birds and insects are depicted. These
may probably have been the work of a Persian potter. But it is in the
tomb of Soliman the great, built in 1544, that the effect of this mode
of decoration can be studied to better advantage. Here the entire walls
of the interior are faced with tiles of admirable diaper patterns,
within borders of equal elegance, adapted to the form of the wall which
they panel and following the subtle outlines of the window openings,
which, filled in with gem-like coloured glass between their intricate
tracery, produce an effect of the greatest richness and harmony. The
application of glazed pottery for decorating wall surface seems never to
have taken root in Greece or Italy (although slabs of glass of various
colours were used by the Romans for that purpose), where Mosaic had
established itself long anterior to the advance of oriental influence;
and even in the most palmy days of the production of Italian majolica
and painted pottery, nothing of this kind was attempted by her artists
beyond an occasional flooring--with the exception of Luca della Robbia,
who not only covered ceilings with tiles between the relievo subjects on
the spandrils and the centre, as seen at San Miniato and the Pazzi
chapel at Santa Croce in Florence, but executed roundels and arch
fillings of tiles, painted with subjects on the flat surface. Germany
made great use of tiles for facing stoves and other purposes in the
sixteenth century, but their inspiration was not oriental; and, again,
the Dutch tiles, much used in England during the last century, are well
known but ornamented on a false principle of decorative art. In the
Indian court of the international exhibition of 1871 were examples of
Zenana windows and wall tiles from Sinde, of recent manufacture, and of
precisely similar character in body and glaze to the class of wares now
under consideration. They, moreover, show another mode of decoration,
known as “_pâte sur pâte_,” in which the design is painted on the
surface of the clay in a slip or “_engobe_” of lighter colour underneath
the glaze; a manner of ornamentation found upon early Chinese porcelain,
and upon that ascribed by M. Jacquemart to Persia.
These tiles, together with shaped pieces of the same Indian ware, are
very interesting, being without doubt the modern representatives of a
remote manufacture and having the closest affinity with the ancient
Egyptian glazed pottery. Whence they were derived or which the parent
stock is a question the answer to which we are not at present in a
position to do more than guess at. In France and England reproductions
have appeared, many of which are excellent from the talent of their
painters or from the technical qualities of their manufacture: those
produced by the Messrs. Minton, copied or derived from oriental
originals, are particularly beautiful.