Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to analyse how chemical reactions are used in a product or process, and to identify their use in a particular profession, with its hazards. The museum offers one craft, the making of lustre pottery, as one author describes it; other products and professions, and the hazards of handling and disposing of chemicals, are for your class. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- C1.1 analyse, on the basis of research, the function of chemical reactions in the production of selected products and/or in processes commonly encountered at home or in the workplace […], and communicate their findings [IP, PR, AI, C]
- C1.2 identify practical applications of chemical reactions in a particular profession […], and assess the associated hazards, including hazards associated with the handling and disposal of chemicals [PR, AI, C]
2 The lesson
What is changed, and by what, in a potter's workshop?
The expectations ask what the reaction does in making the product. List the materials the record names, the order of the steps and what the vessel looks like at the end.
Go deeper
Follow the steps Arthur Lane describes for lustre pottery. The pigment consists essentially of sulphur in various forms with silver oxide, which stains glass or glaze yellow, and copper oxide, which gives the lustrous element 2. It is mixed with an earthy vehicle such as red or yellow ochre and painted, using vinegar or wine-lees, on a glazed vessel already fired once 2. The vessel is fired again lightly in a reducing kiln with little air and much smoke, and the ochre is rubbed away to leave a glittering metallic film imperceptible to the touch 2. Read these as three steps of a flow chart: what goes on, what happens in the kiln, and what is left when the ochre is removed. The record of Islamic lustreware gives Lane's account.
How do we know?
Much of this account is one scholar's reading, so ask what each claim rests on. Lane thinks Baghdad potters took their secrets to Cairo; the evidence includes the elephant bowl signed by its maker, a fragment dedicated to al-Hakim, and the signatures "Muslim" and "Sa'd" 3 4. The earliest dated Persian lustre piece is a Rayy bottle in the British Museum dated 575/1179 5. For Kairouan, Newcomb notes lustre tiles said to have been brought from Baghdad under the Aghlabids 6, while Lane says bichrome lustre tiles were sent to the Great Mosque of Kairouan about 862 with a Baghdad potter 7. Which of these rests on a signature or a date, and which on a report?
Think about it
Lane thinks Baghdad potters took their secrets to Cairo 3, and he sees the end of lustre in Egypt coinciding with its rise in Persia and at Raqqa, the secret being held by a very few families 5. Take a position and answer the strongest objection to it: is a match in timing, together with signed pieces, enough to say that craftsmen carried a chemical process from one place to another, and why?
Into the museum
- Islamic lustreware: Lane's account of the technique and of where the ware was made.
- Rexford Newcomb: the author who reports the lustre tiles at Kairouan and Tlemcen.
- The Great Mosque of Kairouan: the mihrab wall where the lustre tiles are said to have been set.
Try this
Read about Islamic lustreware. Make a flow chart of the steps from the glazed vessel to the finished piece and mark the step where the kiln's conditions matter.
3 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Islamic lustreware have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Pottery with a metallic sheen. Arthur Lane, the record says, describes lustre pigment as sulphur in various forms with silver oxide, which stains glass or glaze yellow, and copper oxide, which gives the lustrous element, mixed with ochre and painted on a glazed vessel already fired once. The vessel is fired again lightly in a reducing kiln with little air and much smoke, and the ochre is rubbed away to leave a glittering metallic film. Which steps of this craft change the materials?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: Science
- 2. Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery: Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia, London: Faber and Faber, 1947, p. 29
- 3. Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery: Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia, London: Faber and Faber, 1947, p. 36
- 4. Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery: Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia, London: Faber and Faber, 1947, p. 37
- 5. Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery: Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia, London: Faber and Faber, 1947, p. 56
- 6. Rexford Newcomb, The Decorative Tiles of North Africa (New York, 1929), p.18
- 7. Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery: Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia, London: Faber and Faber, 1947, p. 30