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—

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 Gombron 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:

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

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.

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.