Opaque white ware

Opaque white ware is earthenware covered with an opaque white glaze containing lead, its opacity depending on the amount of tin; Wilkinson notes it was widely made in the Near East in the ninth and tenth centuries. ¹

The glaze was not new in the ninth century: artificially prepared tin oxide was found in Tutankhamun's tomb, and opaque white glaze was used on tiles of a palace of Ramesses II, on Nebuchadnezzar's glazed bricks at Babylon, and on the Achaemenid archers' frieze from Susa. ¹ Its use in the Sasanian period has not been shown; at Ctesiphon it appeared only in the early Islamic areas. ¹

Iraqi potters of the ninth century used the glaze to great effect; analysis of good Iraqi fragments found at Nishapur shows their opaque glaze has less lead than clear lead glazes. ¹ Wilkinson thinks it was first used to imitate the white or cream Chinese ware imported in the eighth and ninth centuries — high-fired and porcellanous — which Iraqi potters, lacking kaolin, could not or chose not to copy exactly. ¹ His chapter covers the imported ware and its local imitations at Nishapur. ²