Words for techniques, materials and tools

This lesson asks you to explain terms for a variety of techniques, materials and tools and to use them correctly. The museum offers terms from three Islamic crafts, pouncing, tile firing and calligraphic measure; the terms of your own studio come from your class. ¹

Pick a term from each record and explain it in two sentences without using the term itself. Then add a small diagram.

Match each term to a step in your own studio. Where there is no match, say what the missing step would be.

One method has two names in two crafts. The record on pouncing gives Norah Titley's description: transparent deerskin was laid over the original and its outline traced, the line closely pricked with a fine needle, then the pricked skin laid on the paper and charcoal dabbed on it from a mesh bag ². The calligrapher's record describes large jali work. The master made a template, the kalip: the outline of the letters was pricked with a needle through several sheets, and the surface was dusted with charcoal or chalk so the design passed to the sheet below ³. The first record calls the method pouncing; the second calls what the calligrapher made a template.

Titley's example is an object she names: a horseman and lion traced on skin in an album in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (Hazine 2153) ². For the calligrapher's template the record cites the description in an encyclopaedia entry, and names no template that survives. So the word pouncing rests on a named object, and the word template on a description.

In Titley's description the pricked skin is laid on the paper and charcoal is dabbed through it ². In the calligrapher's record the outline is pricked through several sheets and dusted with charcoal or chalk ³. Take a position and answer the strongest objection to it: are these one technique with two names, or two techniques?

• Pouncing in Persian painting: the skin, the needle and the charcoal, and the horseman and lion in the Topkapı album.
• Calligrapher (khattat): the template for large lettering, the dot and the mistar.
• Potter / tilemaker: the terms of glaze and firing for tile.

Read the records on pouncing in Persian painting and the potter. Make a three-column list of the terms you find, a plain explanation of each, and the step in your own work it matches.