Fritware (stonepaste)

Arthur Lane describes the earliest Saljuq white wares, said to have been found mostly at Rayy and close in technique to the later Kashan wares, as having an exceedingly hard, compact, fine paste, translucent where the walls are thin; he calls it a "soft-paste porcelain" akin to the French pâte tendre of the eighteenth century, composed of glass frit, powdered silica and white clay. ¹ A transparent alkaline glaze, colourless or ivory-tinted and full of minute bubbles, was laid directly on the paste and cracks deeply when it decays. ¹

Many of these early vessels are plain, with lobed rims like Chinese wares, some copying ying-ch'ing and Ting features; the carved ornament then moved into an Islamic idiom with half-palmettes and naskh inscriptions, and the walls were often pierced with small holes, filled by the glaze, as "windows". ¹ Lane thinks they began no earlier than the twelfth century. ²

Lane notes that some late Fatimid pieces signed by Sa'd have a hard white body under a transparent alkaline glaze, and thinks the Egyptians learned the technique from Persia. ³