Words for techniques, materials and tools

Brief

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

Can you explain the word to someone who has never seen the step?

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

Which word do you already use under another name?

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

Go deeper

Tile has its own words. The potter record says the Ottoman word cini means Chinese work, from Cin, China ². A coloured glaze is fired over a tile body and gives a permanent colour ². At Kubadabad, near Beysehir (1226–1236), the design was painted on a matt white, purple or turquoise glaze with a silver or copper oxide mixture and fired again at low heat ². The mina'i technique, with seven colours painted over a fired glaze and fired again, is found in Anatolian Seljuk art, in the entry's account, only at the Alaeddin kiosk in Konya ².

How do we know?

All of this comes from one entry in the TDV encyclopaedia ². The entry is about architectural tile, not vessels, and does not describe a kiln, quartz frit, cobalt by name, a guild or an apprenticeship ². The museum has no person record for Merendli, Muhammad al-Majnun or Ali ibn Ilyas Ali, the makers the entry names ². So the terms a glossary can take from the record are glaze and technique words, not kiln words.

Think about it

The entry says lustre was painted with a silver or copper oxide mixture and fired again at low heat, and that mina'i was painted over a fired glaze and fired again ². Take a position and answer the strongest objection to it: is a second firing a technique of its own, or only a step of the first?

Into the museum

Potter / tilemaker: lustre, mina'i, cut tile mosaic and the Ottoman underglaze colours.
Pouncing in Persian painting: a term from another craft, the pricked outline dusted with charcoal.
Calligrapher (khattat): the dot, the mistar and the nib widths of the hands.

Try this

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.