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Abu Tahir family  

Sheila S. Blair

[Abu Ṭāhir]

Persian family of potters. The family is sometimes known, somewhat improperly, by the epithet Kashani [al-Kashani, Qashani], which refers to their home town, Kashan. It was a major centre for the production of lustre pottery in medieval Iran, and they were among the leading potters there, working in both the Monumental and the Miniature styles (see Islamic art, §V, 3(iii)). As well as the lustre tiles for many Shi‛ite shrines at Qum, Mashhad, Najaf and elsewhere, they made enamelled and lustred vessels. Three other families of Persian lustre potters are known, but none had such a long period of production. At least four generations of the Abu Tahir family are known from signatures on vessels and tiles, including dados, large mihrabs and grave covers. The family may be traced to Abu Tahir ibn Abi Husayn, who signed an enamelled bowl (Cairo, Mus. Islam. A.). A lustre bowl in the Monumental style (London, N.D. Khalili priv. col.), signed by ...

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Amol  

Gordon Campbell

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Bizen  

Richard L. Wilson

Japanese centre of ceramics production. High-fired ceramic wares were manufactured from the end of the 12th century in and around the village of Inbe, Bizen Province (now Okayama Prefect.). This region had been a centre for manufacturing Sue-style stonewares and Haji-style earthenwares from the 6th century ad (see Japan, §IX, 2, (ii), (a)). At the end of the Heian period (794–1185) the potters moved from the old Sue-ware sites around Osafune village to Inbe, just to the north. In response to increased agricultural development, the new kilns manufactured kitchen mortars (suribachi), narrow-necked jars (tsubo) and wide-necked jars (kame). During the 13th century the wares show less of the grey-black surfaces typical of the old Sue tradition and more of the purple-reddish colour characteristic of Bizen. In the 14th century Bizen-ware production sites shifted from the higher slopes to the foot of the mountains. Kilns expanded in capacity, ranging up to 40 m in length. Vast quantities of Bizen wares, particularly kitchen mortars, were exported via the Inland Sea to Kyushu, Shikoku and numerous points in western Honshu, establishing Bizen as the pre-eminent ceramics centre in western Japan. By the 15th century the Bizen repertory had expanded to include agricultural wares in graded sizes; wares then featured combed decoration and such functional additions as lugs and pouring spouts. Plastic–forming was assisted by the introduction of a fusible clay found 2–4 m under paddy-fields. This clay, which fires to an almost metallic hardness, is still in use today....

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Chancay  

Jane Feltham

Pre-Columbian culture of South America. It centered on the Chancay Valley of the central Peruvian coast, ranging north and south to the Fortaleza and Lurín valleys, and is known for its distinctive pottery and textile styles. Chancay culture flourished between c. 1100 and 1470 ce, under Chimu rulership in the 15th century. Vessels and textiles have been found at such sites as Cerro Trinidad, Lauri, and Pisquillo, mostly in graves covered with stout timbers and a layer of earth.

Chancay vessels were made by coiling; modeled features sometimes occur, but elaborate jars were molded. The fabric, fired to a light orange, is thin and porous. Some vessels are covered with a plain white slip, but most are also painted with brownish-black designs. Forms include bowls, goblets, tumblers, cylindrical jars, and ovoid jars with rounded bases and narrow, bulging necks that sometimes end in a flaring rim. Vessel heights range from 60 mm for bowls to 750 mm for jars. Animals (especially birds and reptiles) and humans are frequently modeled on the upper shoulder or around a handle. More elaborate jars are zoomorphic or consist of two flasks connected by a bridge. Some show scenes, such as a dignitary being carried on a litter. Vertical black bands often divide design areas, within which are patterns of stripes, wavy lines, crosshatching, diamonds, triangles and dots, checkers, volutes, and stylized birds or fishes, sometimes in asymmetrical halves. Characteristic of the style are large, necked jars with faces (known as ...

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Chertsey tiles  

Gordon Campbell

Set of English medieval tiles. In 1852 excavators at the ruined Benedictine Abbey of St Peter in Chertsey, Surrey, discovered fragments of a large 13th-century tiled pavement. The designs portray scenes from the medieval romances of ‘Sir Tristrem’ and ‘Richard, Coeur de Lion’; these tiles, which are the finest example of medieval pavement art in England, are now in the British Museum. In ...

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Echizen  

Richard L. Wilson

Centre of ceramics production in Japan, based on some 20 kiln sites 7 km north-west of the city of Takefu (Fukui Prefect.). Echizen is known as one of Japan’s ‘Six Old Kilns’. It is one of three centres that arose in the area (the others being Kaga and Suzu) in the 12th century in response to increased agricultural production. Ceramics appeared in Fukui Prefecture in the 6th century ad with the manufacture of Sue stoneware, fired in tunnel kilns (anagama; see Japan §IX 2., (ii), (a)). In the 12th century, however, increased agricultural production, coupled with the introduction of new technology, encouraged the development of a higher-fired brown stoneware. The use of a tunnel kiln with a dividing pillar, the manufacture of jars with everted rims and incised horizontal bands and the use of the coil-and-paddle technique in the early Echizen wares point to origins in kilns such as ...

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An hua decoration  

Gordon Campbell

[Chin.: “hidden”]

Term applied to Chinese porcelain where the decoration can only be seen under a clear glaze or through transmitted light. Such decoration is sometimes found in Song dynasty (960–1279) Ding and Xing wares, and becomes very common in the white porcelain of the Yongle period (1403–1424) of the Ming dynasty. By the mid-16th century ...

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Ica–Chincha  

George Bankes

Pre-Columbian culture of South America that extended throughout several valleys on the south coast of Peru and flourished between c. 1000 and 1476 ce. The Ica–Chincha pottery style was first recognized by the German archaeologist Max Uhle, and regional variations have since been defined by archaeologists from the University of California at Berkeley, especially by Dorothy Menzel. The Ica Valley appears to have been the main cultural center, while the Chincha Valley seems to have had greater political significance. Commerce was important; pottery was clearly held in high esteem, since it has been found at sites on the central coast and inland in the Río Pampas area near Ayacucho, and it seems, moreover, to have formed the principal indicator of cultural cohesion and diversity between the valleys. The main feature of the decorated wares is a polychrome style, usually with a red base overpainted with white and black designs. Motifs are frequently geometric, with many designs taken from textiles, including diamonds, stepped lines, and zigzag lines. There are also many depictions of birds and fish that are difficult to see in the maze of angular designs. A characteristic vessel shape is a jar with a rounded base, globular body, narrow neck, and flaring rim. Dishes with a flanged rim are also common. As on ...

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Jingdezhen  

Regina Krahl

[Ching-te-chen]

Town and county seat in north-east Jiangxi Province, China, and the country’s main centre of porcelain production. For most of its existence the town was part of Fouliang, in Raozhou Prefecture, and in historical records its ceramics are generally referred to as Raozhou ware. With a continuous history of manufacturing porcelain from the Tang period (ad 618–907), it is the source of most Chinese porcelain.

The imperial kilns were located at Zhushan in the centre of modern Jingdezhen city; many lesser kilns were situated in Hutian, 4 km to the south-east. The area is supplied with fine-quality porcelain stone, the basic raw material for Chinese porcelain; it is surrounded by forests that provided fuel for the kilns; and it is conveniently connected to the major ports of southern China by rivers. Recent excavations have brought to light several different kiln types, including egg-shaped zhenyao kilns, bread-roll-shaped mantou kilns and dragon kilns (...

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Jizhou  

Peter Hardie

[Chichow; Chi-chou; Ji’an; Chi-an]

Site in central Jiangxi Province, China, and former center of ceramic production. Jizhou is the Sui- to Song-period (581–1279) name for modern Ji’an, a town on the Ganjiang River, which flows northwards into the Yangzi Basin. Ceramic kilns operated from at least the Tang period (618–907 ce) until the end of the Yuan (1279–1368) at the village of Yonghexu, about 8 km outside the town. The site is recorded in Wang Zuo’s 1462 edition of the Gegu yaolun (“Essential criteria of antiquities”). Archibald Brankston visited it in 1937 and took sherds to England (London, BM), and from 1953 the local authorities have continued the investigation and excavation of the remains of some twenty kilns and other structures.

After some experimentation with whitewares and celadons in the Tang, the kilns’ range of activity was developed during the Song (960–1279), especially the Southern Song (...

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Laverstock  

Michael R. McCarthy

English centre of ceramic production, near Salisbury, Wilts. Several excavated kilns, together with parts of workshops, suggest production at this site during the mid-13th century. Local clays were used with such tempering materials as flint. A polychrome effect was created by the use of lines of white slip, often in combination with applied strips and incised lines. Anthropomorphic decoration was both applied and stamped in the form of face masks on the sides and rims of jugs and often formed a prominent part of the spout. Other forms included cooking pots, money-boxes, aquamaniles, costrels, bottles, kitchen wares and building materials....

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Lyveden  

Michael R. McCarthy

English centre of ceramic production. Excavations have revealed potters’ settlements dating to between the 13th century and early 15th at Lyveden in the Rockingham Forest, Northants. The tenements incorporated workshops with hearths, deposits of unused clay in stone-lined pits, drains, industrial waste, kilns, knives, hones and a bone stamp. Sometimes clays from within the tenement boundary were used with such tempers as crushed shell and limestone. Decoration embellished several forms and included rouletting and applied strips on kitchen wares and white slip and applied pads on jugs. Forms included cooking pots, bowls, shallow dishes, cisterns, curfews and building materials....

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Mina'i ware  

Sheila R. Canby

Type of enamelled (Pers. mīnā'ī) ware made in Iran in the late 12th century and early 13th; dated mina'i wares range from 1186 to 1224. This overglaze ware, unique to Iran, was probably first made at Kashan. It is a fritware consisting of bowls, jugs, beakers, ewers, vases and bottles covered first with a transparent colourless or opaque turquoise glaze and then fired. Colours such as turquoise and cobalt blue were applied prior to the first firing, whereas black, red, white and gold were painted on to the cold glaze and fixed in a second firing. The result was a group of polychrome pots decorated in a style closely allied to that of book illustration. Indeed, several pieces contain scenes from the Shāhnāma (‘Book of kings’), and one large bowl (Washington, DC, Freer) shows an actual battle that took place in the 1220s.

In addition to identifiable narrative scenes on bowls, tiles and a beaker (Washington, DC, Freer), five bowls are inscribed with the month Muharram and the years ...

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Mixteca–Puebla  

H. B. Nicholson

Stylistic and iconographic tradition in Mesoamerica during the Postclassic period (c. 900–1521).

The term was coined in 1938 by the American archaeologist George Vaillant for what he variously defined as a “culture,” “civilization,” or “culture complex” that developed after the Teotihuacan collapse in the region of the modern Mexican state of Puebla and the western portion of Oaxaca, an area known as the Mixteca (from the predominant indigenous language of the region). He hypothesized that Mixteca–Puebla diffused into the Basin of Mexico during what he termed the “Chichimec” period, providing “the source and inspiration of Aztec civilization.” He believed that aspects of the complex spread widely throughout Mesoamerica during its final major era, the Postclassic, which he suggested should be labeled the “Mixteca–Puebla period.”

Although Vaillant never defined his concept with precision, he clearly had in mind a distinctive artistic style and its concomitant iconography, particularly exemplified by the members of the “Codex Borgia group” of ritual and divinatory screenfolds (...

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Nuneaton  

Michael R. McCarthy

English town in the county of Warwickshire. Named after a 12th-century Benedictine nunnery that was founded at Eaton. The abbey, like so many other buildings, fell into disrepair in the Reformation when the church was converted into a private residence. Very little survives today of the original building apart from a tiled floor, the crossing piers, and some low walls; these are incorporated in the parish church of St Mary the Virgin (the Abbey Church), which is largely a 19th-century recreation (with some later 20th-century extensions).

The town is also renowned as a centre of ceramic production. Over 40 kilns and parts of workshops dating to between the 13th and 16th centuries have been excavated at Chilvers Coton, now in Nuneaton. Varicoloured local clays were used with tempers, and wares were initially fired in simple kilns with wood and later in multi-flued kilns with coal. Saggars were also used in some late kilns. Much tableware was lead glazed, and, although plain vessels predominate, decoration in the form of incised and combed lines, applied pads and strips, stamps and rouletting is found mainly on jugs. Other forms included aquamaniles, costrels, cups, chafing dishes, bottles, and a wide range of kitchen wares and building materials. Anthropomorphic forms and motifs occur but are rare (e.g. jug, late 13th C.; Coventry, Herbert A.G. & Mus.)....

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Peterman  

Austrian, 13th century, male.

Potter.

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Sanage  

Richard L. Wilson

Centre of ceramics production in Japan. It flourished from the 5th to the 16th century. The large complex of kilns is clustered around Mt Sanage near Nagoya (Aichi Prefect.). Sanage wares are understood, through extensive archaeological research carried out from the mid-1950s, to have been the earliest glazed stonewares (kaiyūtō) to have been made in Japan. Probably due to its proximity to transportation routes and because of ample supplies of refractory clay, Sanage became established as a centre of Sue ware production in the late 5th century (see Japan §IX 2., (ii), (a)). In the mid-8th century, inspired by imported Chinese celadons, particularly Yue wares (see China: Ceramics), the Sanage potters began to move away from the Sue styles and techniques in favour of new continental models. More refractory, whiter-firing, levigated clays were employed, and the Sue style tunnel kiln (anagama; see Japan §IX 1., (v)...