Non-glazed ceramics

In Byzantium

Ceramics for general use

The study of ceramics for general use, produced and commercialized in the Byzantine Empire in medieval times, was neglected for a long time by archaeologists, who were more interested in fine, decorated vessels. Because of this, there are few typological references to help us classify—either chronologically, or according to the centre of production or type—culinary ware, and vessels for transport and storage. However, literary sources and archaeological documentation enable us to draw up an inventory of the main types of object and identify their function.

Although culinary ware was relatively inexpensive, it was important to take care of it. According to Theodora Stoudios, if a monk broke an earthenware pot during a meal, their negligence condemned them to three hundred penitential prostrations or to standing at the entry of the refectory, holding the fragments of the pot in their hands. Two methods of cooking fresh meat and poultry coexisted in Byzantium: sophisticated methods, such as roasting and grilling, and boiling and stewing. When boiling food, the earthenware pots (tsoukka, tsoukalion, and chytra) were sealed with a cover (épikythrion) or hermetically sealed with paste. Eustathius of Thessalonica mentions a recipe, in which boiled chicken simmers with a sauce in a covered pot. Fish and vegetables were also cooked in pots to make stock. The tsoukalia comprised cooking pots, without or with only one handle and a flat bottom, and convex-bottomed pots with two handles and globular bodies, which were bigger. In Byzantium and Europe, the capacity of earthenware soup pots didn't exceed the average size of a meal—almost no pots with a capacity of more than 5 litres have been found in archaeological digs. Pots with a lenticular base were placed on a metal or earthenware tripod (pyrostates) in the fireplace. In the case of fried food, earthenware pans (tegania) were used for cooking fresh fish and eggs, such as the sphoungaton, a sort of onion omelette. The teganitai were biscuits fried in oil, in a pan placed on the embers. The Byzantines used a saltsarion or gararion, a device for keeping sauces hot, like garum, a sauce made with fish juice and eaten with boiled meat. These table plate-warmers were sometimes decorated with fine patterns and lead glazes. Also used in the kitchens were earthenware funnels, sieves, kettles, mortar, basins, bowls, ramekins, and other small, multi-purpose pots.

Literary sources also mention the use of various earthenware containers used for the conservation of foodstuffs. Salted pork, and salted and smoked fish were kept in storage jars throughout the year. Vegetables were placed in brine in koureloi; olives, cheeses and beetroot were kept in kouroupia. To preserve apples during the winter, people placed them in perfumed jars, while pears dipped in honey were placed in storage pots and dried figs were laid in earthenware pots with laurel leaves. Five types of amphora (magarika) were identified from the tenth to the fourteenth century. These are amphorae with fluted handles, ovoid, pear-shaped, and conical bodies, and round bases, which were mainly used for transporting oil and wine. Some of them were made in the Ganos region on the north coast of the Sea of Marmara. This was related to the production of and commerce in wine that developed there in the eleventh century. The Tekmezar I wreck was found to contain more than 20,000 amphorae in its hold, each of which weighed around 12kg. In the Camaltı Burnu I wreck, dating from the thirteenth century, there were 800 amphorae, each weighing an average of 70kg. Very few of them are stamped and some bear painted or engraved inscriptions, whose meaning remains a mystery.

From the tenth century, amphorae were joined by other earthenware containers, such as giarra (jars with three or four handles and flat bottoms, introduced by Italian merchants) and wooden casks. Among the goods left by Théodoulos to the Monastery of Xeropotamou, between 1270 and 1274, were casks and barrels (boutsia). These barrels were used for the commerce in grapes and other fruits, and also for transporting wine—in the fifteenth century, Malvasia wine (Peloponnese) was sent to the Port of London in casks. Many people bought small quantities of this beverage from wine merchants in the capital for consumption at home. They transported it in phlaskia, or earthenware gourds, and kept it in flat-bottomed stamnia. The lagenia were medium-size containers, with a spherical or ovular handle and convex bottom, used for transporting oil, wine, and water. Their interior surfaces bear traces of plaster or sediment. The Byzantines used jugs with tubular spouts and trefoil or perforated mouths for serving food. Archaeological digs on the Pergamum acropolis have shown that nearly all the houses in the thirteenth century had a storage room, as the remains of large jars indicates—sixty pithoi have so far been found, some of them measuring up to 1.5m in height. They can contain between 100 and 1,000 litres. The biggest jars were put in position before the room's walls were constructed and the deepest were half buried. They were hermetically sealed with covers, thus protecting the contents from insects and mice. Traces of pine and cypress resin sometimes appear on the internal surface of these pithoi. The domestic inventories that were drawn up in the tenth to fifteenth centuries show that jars and casks were more common in rural homes, where it was necessary to store various foodstuffs over the long term. 

For hygiene purposes, earthenware utensils were also used. In the Hospital of the Pantocrator, in Constantinople, the objects used for bathing ill monks were bowls, water pots, and soap containers; chamber pots (klokion) have also been found.

V. F.

In islam

On archaeological sites, the majority of excavated ceramics are unglazed and undecorated. They are all clay-based productions. Up until quite recently, there has been no in-depth study of such pottery. Utilitarian objects—basins, earthenware jars, pots, ewers, lamps, Noria drinking cups, etc.—show less of an evolution as those with glazed ornamentation and continued to be produced during the first centuries of Islam without departing from their earlier pre-Islamic models. Some of them never went out of use, being particularly cherished for keeping water cool, thanks to the evaporation that occurs through their porous walls.

Many were decorated, however; everyday utensils made from clay that has had very little prior kneading have rather unsophisticated decorations. Creating effects of relief by working the paste in various ways while it is still moist is an ancient technique and therefore not an innovation of Muslim potters. This often involved just a simple straight or curved line made by a pointed tool, sometimes as rudimentary as a stick, carved more or less deeply into the surface. 

Depending on the width and depth of the line, we can qualify the embellishment as “engraved”; when it is very fine we use the term “incised” and when a large portion of the surface material is removed “champlevé”. Combing is a decorative technique that enables a potter to trace several lines at a time. A repeated indented motif in a continuous vertical or horizontal band can be obtained by using a small tracing wheel or rope. This was a frequent technique employed in the early days of Islam. When the tool is a style or a terra cotta stamp used for printing, we use the term “stamping”. The motif indented or in relief on the tool could be very small (occelli or dots) or very large, the latter being often an epigraphic, animal or figurative motif. More or less deep cuts in the side of the object were used to form geometric networks; sometimes these were cut out entirely, forming openwork designs such as what we see in certain Maghreb or Spanish[1] ink pots and envelopes of lamps. When appliqué is used to decorate pottery, a ribbon, a strip of modelled clay or other motifs elaborated in small moulds are fixed to the object with barbotine. In fact, the ornamental motif can be moulded using one or more terra cotta moulds and engraved or stamped with diverse designs as was the case in Ayyubid and Mamluk productions, most notably on pitchers and gourds. In some of the more refined pieces, these designs are often used in conjunction. These pieces tend to have thinner walls, worked from a well-kneaded paste. At times they are extremely refined (one or two millimetres), adding to their aesthetic import, which is the case of certain productions from the end of the eleventh and all the way through the tenth in Mesopotamia and the Iranian world. The same decorative motifs can be seen on glazed, generally monochrome, ceramics.

Unglazed objects, when the ornamentation is effected with skill, are certainly not lacking in beauty or humour. The fairly large earthenware jars made with alluvial clay from the Tigris and the Euphrates reveal multiple embellishments that suggest the influence of designs from antiquity. Those from the eighth to tenth centuries present motifs created from a variety of techniques, the principal technique being that of appliqué—barbotine ribbons fixed to the body of the object that are more or less raised and engraved, with a ground replete with carved motifs. Once again, they show the signs of a classical Oriental heritage, manifest in the tree separating the two affronted animals[2]. From the Ayyubid period we have large ovoid-shaped earthenware jars which, in order to stand upright, require a support. The body of the jar is patterned with delicate motifs in barbotine and the shoulder of the neck is treated with great flights of fancy. In certain cases, niches with lobed arches act as a framework for a prince sitting on a throne, who is sometimes joined by riders and schematic figures placed on the sides of the object. There are also representations of human masks and numerous protomes of felines that recall those, in stone, made by the Seljuks in Anatolia. These motifs show various effects of relief, sculpted in clay or laid on with barbotine[3]. Sometimes, small coloured shards of glazed ceramics are encrusted in the eyes of the felines or added here and there, accentuating the almost “Baroque” style of this production[4].

A number of terra cotta, moulded lamps date from the early days of Islam, again very similar to classical models but sometimes with inscriptions in Arabic[5], as well as disks with very varied ornamentation and pierced with a round orifice, very likely lids of pots, attached to the vessel’s handle. They appear on most sites dating from the eighth to ninth centuries, such as Suse, along with other ceramics, as well as some very shapely thin-walled objects—bowls, cups, ewers. Ewers, sometimes only summarily decorated, were a recurrent model during this period, as well as during the period for glass and bronze, and were present from Eastern Iran to the shores of the Mediterranean: a globular-shaped belly on a flat base, a long cylindrical neck parallel to which is a handle, surmounted by a thumb piece fixed to the shoulder and lip of the object[6]. We have every reason to believe these objects were viewed as works of art as many of them carry the name of an author. They were also very popular among the elite as some of them carry the name or coat of arms of important historical figures. A fragmented goblet, extremely refined with thin walls, was found in Raqqa, in the Abbasid Palace A. It is bordered by a Kufic inscription giving the names of the artisan—Ibrâhâm the Christian—the place of fabrication—al-Hîrah—and the patron—Prince Suleymân, son of the Prince of Believers, undoubtedly Suleymân, son of Abû Ja‘far al-Mansûr who lived in the eighth century[7]. A very elegant ewer from the ninth to tenth century, also from Syria, on a small pedestal with a globular belly moulded in two parts, a long neck and high handle, embellished with thinly traced garlands with interlocking flowers and pampers, shows the persisting trend of employing patterns and motifs already in vogue during Roman times in Syria and Egypt[8]. These moulded objects, often in two parts but usually varying in decorative design, are numerous. Many are pots on small bases with globular bellies and slightly flared cylindrical necks and quadrant handles, the majority of which date from the Seljuk, Fatimid and Ayyubid periods. The decorative themes are extremely diverse: lines of ova, passing animals, epigraphic bands, or combinations of the three. On occasion, for example on archaeological sites that are comprised of a neighbourhood of potters, the mould and the corresponding moulded object are both present[9]. The majority of these pots present an openwork filter at the base of the neck to keep out insects and leaves. Extremely varied, the ornamentation of these filters are at turns very rustic and quite refined, even replete with humour. A number of them have been excavated in Fustât (the ancient name of Cairo)[10]. Also belonging to these periods are certain conical vessels, often referred to as “Eolipiles”, made of fire clay fired in special kilns, and gourds made out of several pieces, two of which are moulded and fixed together with barbotine. Taking on a slightly different form, the gourds from the Mamluk era are also highly decorated and sometimes show the coat of arms of high-placed statesmen such as Tuquz Timur[11], cupbearer of the sultan Nâsir al-Dîn Muhammad, who later became the governor of Hama, then of Alep and finally, the viceroy of Damascus before dying in Cairo in 1345.

Unglazed ceramics have continued to serve a function to the present day as utilitarian objects, namely water jugs and storing jars. But with new technical developments in glazing, the more elegant and refined pieces have disappeared. 

Apart from the effects of relief, potters had ways of decorating their creations with colour. In the simplest cases, they used a coloured engobe to mask the underlying colour of the clay itself[12]. But the artisan could also play with creating different effects of contrast by affixing on the larger, often thick walled objects, geometric embellishments painted in red and black. This type of production appears to be characteristic of central and southern Syria in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. But other procedures were also used. A series of objects, most of which are broken, found in Suse, are decorated with Cursive inscriptions in black ink that are very difficult to decipher[13]. On a few simple pieces, like those oil lamps that have different shapes from those that imitated ancient models, reveal a few hesitant drippings in glossy yellow or green. And finally, on the parts left bare, some objects present glossy monochrome or polychrome ornamentation, circled with brown, a technique called partial cuerda seca, very quickly replaced by all-over cuerda seca, which leaves none of the underlying support apparent. This technique, examples of which were excavated on the site of Suse, made for highly-prized objects in al-Andalus[14].

M. B.T.