Slip-painted ware with coloured engobe

Since the potters of eastern Iran and Transoxiana painted in black and colour on a white engobe, it was a natural step to reverse the scheme and paint in white or other light slips on a coloured engobe; this is the slip-painted ware with coloured engobe that Wilkinson presents. ¹

The engobes are principally an earth red that fired light brown under a colourless glaze, and a manganese purplish black that turned a warm dark brown, often near black; a small subgroup has no engobe, the clay itself serving as ground. ¹ The metal oxides of the engobe affect the glaze above: purplish black under green glaze becomes almost black, and some pieces from Nishapur have light green decoration on a purplish black ground. ¹

The body matches that of the white-engobe wares, from red to yellow; but the exterior is often incompletely glazed and the base rarely glazed. ¹ The technique was used for vessels from toy-like smallness to sizeable bowls; the simplest decoration is clusters of three or four white dots, and some designs answer those of black on white ware as white on black. ¹