Alan Caiger-Smith, “Esfahan: an unexpected pottery workshop”,

May 10 2001: forthcoming in The Ceramics Review

The text of this article, which is not yet published, has been kindly lent by the author.

To read Abu'l-Qasim's treatise (1301) on pottery production,

go to this article by James Allan: “Abu’l-Qasim’s Treatise on Ceramics”

[Note: the numbers in square brackets indicate the page numbers of the original printed
article]

The workshop I will try to describe is in a side street just outside the western wall of the
bazaar. It attracted our attention because it was quiet and peaceful while everywhere
else was filled with activity. The potter is probably in his sixties, though at first sight he
seems older. He was sitting on a stool in the street, pencilling a floral design on a vase
in preparation for painting it. Beside him, steps led down into his subterranean
workshop. There was very little inside, only the wheel and various tools, bags containing
materials and a small group of tiles and pots of various kinds on the floor.

He invited us in, my son Martin and me and our Iranian friend Shahram, who interpreted
for us. Unlike the other potters I had met, he used a white clay and his pots were quite
small, nothing being more than about ten inches high. He said that this was the material
his father had taught him to use and that he did everything just as his father had shown
him. Clearly, he revered his father. He showed us the faded photograph on the wall with
himself as a young man kneeling beside the bearded old master-potter. He proudly
produced one of father’s jars, a fine pot decorated [in] underglaze with a simple
classical floral design in several colours. The white clay of the unglazed foot showed
that it was made from what is now known as siliceous paste. This was the synthesised
clay body that was generally used for fine, glazed pottery in Persia centuries ago and
was described by Abu’l-Qasim of Kashan in his Treatise of 1301. (Translated and
annotated by J. W. Allan, “Abu’l-Qasim’s Treatise on Ceramics”, Iran XI, 1973). The clay
can be thought of as a forerunner of soft paste porcelain. In its day it was a unique way
of producing a hard white clay body with a good glaze fit at low temperature. Modern
kilns and glaze materials have not exactly superseded it, but they have led to simpler
alternative kinds of glazed ceramics. The paste is not easy to work with and it needs
preparation. Hans Wulff found that it was still used by a few potters in the 1950s
(Traditional Crafts of Persia, 1955, p.165) but I had supposed that by now it might have
passed out of use.
When we asked more about the clay he said “If you can wait a quarter of an hour I will
prepare a little and make something on the wheel.” He picked up two large pieces of
flint and struck them together. “These are the stones for making fire”, he said. “My father
taught me to make powder from this stone for preparing the clay.” He struck off some
pieces on to a little pile that had already been prepared, crushed then on the floor with a
flat stone, and sieved them. He made a small pile of the fine particles and added a white
powder of ground glass. “It comes from these”, he said, lifting a cracked glass lamp out
of the corner. Then, using a chunk of stone, he knocked a piece off a block of white
material resembling limestone. He made me feel it and smell it. It seemed more like
rock than clay. “It’s hard now”, he said, “but with water it becomes soft. This is Boté clay
(gel-e-Boté). It comes from about three hundred kilometres north of Esfahan”. I asked if
it was the same as white Luri clay, which Abu’l-Qasim had written about. He didn’t
know, nor did Abu’l-Qasim’s name mean anything to him. (It might possibly be the same
material [2] known by a different name, for Luristan is a large area in the north west of
Iran).

For some while he squatted on the floor, kneading the flint, the glass and the white clay
together again and again into a ball. “I can throw this on the wheel for you now”, he
said, “but it is really better if it is left till tomorrow. It swells overnight.” (Abu’l-Qasim says
exactly the same).

He mounted his wheel, turning the flywheel with his foot, and began to sing. “Singing
helps me to work better”, he said. As he sang he centred the clay and slowly drew up a
small cylinder which he then widened. He worked very carefully. One could see that it
was a difficult material to fashion, unlike the earthenware clays used by other potters. I
was delighted to follow enough of the song to recognise it. It was Omar Khayyam’s
verse about visiting the potter’s house under the crescent moon, with the clay
population standing round in rows.

He cut the form off the wheel and proceeded to make another form, much narrower. He
cut this off in turn and placed above the first one. “Tomorrow the neck can be joined”, he
said. “With this material the pot cannot all be made in one piece.” (This is exactly what
one finds in the old pots made of siliceous paste. Hollow ware was often made by
assembling several units, body, neck and foot, because the clay was not plastic enough
to enable the whole form to be made from a single lump.) “When I was a small boy,” he
said, “I kept asking my father to teach me, but he wouldn’t. ‘Show me what you can do
by yourself!’ he said. I worked very hard and eventually I managed to make something
to show him. ‘Good!’ he said, ‘now you have made a beginning I can teach you.’ He was
a wise man, my father.”

We returned next day. The two thrown pieces were still by the wheel, by this time
almost dry. The potter whittled down the neck with a knife till it fitted the rim of the little
pot. I asked if was too dry join. “It can still be joined”, he said. “I wet the clay and the
pieces will fit together”. (This would not apply to most clays, the white Boté clay is
unusual and must behave differently).
From another kind of siliceous paste, firing a buff colour instead of white, he makes the
small disks which are used in the mosque during prayers. “They cannot be scratched or
chipped”, he commented, passing one to me to feel. It was as hard as fine granite.

Then he showed us the kiln. It was square sided, the walls being supported with light
iron rods, but internally it was about two metres deep, a round updraught kiln, just as
Abu’l-Qasim described. Most traditional kilns in Iran seem to be round. This one,
however, had two flat, wide shelflike projections around the inside, one about two feet
above the other, surrounding the central hole which went down the the bottom, at one
side of which was the firemouth. The top a shallow dome, covered with a mixture of clay
and hay. He demonstrated how the central aperture could be closed with large tiles
during the firing, leaving a vent for the escaping fumes. There were also five or six other
small vents spaced around the vault to equalise the pull of the draught. Since the
workshop was built of stone and stucco it could not burn down. Nonetheless, the place
must have been densely smoky when the kiln was firing, for there was no sign of any
ventilation. The [3] walls were certainly very black. “When I pack the kiln”, he said, “they
lower me down on a rope. Before the pots go in I have to put in the pegs. Here they are.
They go into the holes in the wall.” I could hardly believe that I was really seeing a kind
of kiln that I had read about in a book written seven hundred years ago. “Now”, he said,
“these small shelves are placed on the pegs and the pots sit on the shelves.” Again, it
was just as Abu’l-Qasim had described.

The firing is done with wood, mostly broken packing cases. How did he know when to
stop the firing? “You must know,” he said, “that at first the pots go all black because of
the smoke. Then they get clean and after that the glaze begins to shine with heat. By
the fireplace you can see two holes where the wood goes in. I start with the lower one,
then later I use them both. After five hours the pots will be perfectly finished.” He
discoursed in a most animated way with Shahram about the process of firing, now
laughing and making explanatory mime, now whispering conspiratorially as if
communicating a secret, all with dramatic facial expressions. I missed much of this, but
having often fired kilns myself I think I got the drift of it.

The pots are fired once only. The decoration is painted direct on the clay and it is then
covered with the glaze, which is poured into or over the pots from a bowl. If it is uneven
it can be smoothed down once it dries. When fired it is shiny and extremely smooth. He
slid a sherd of glazed ware over my cheek to show how nice it feels. “The glaze and the
clay bind together more strongly than with other kinds of pottery”, he said. “Other glazes
can be chipped off if you hit them with a stone”. He demonstrated this with a piece of
broken earthenware. “But my glaze won’t come away”. He struck one of his own pots to
prove the point. (The glaze-body interface is indeed very strong in siliceous paste
vessels, despite the low firing temperature, because the glass in the body fuses with the
glaze covering).

He does not prepare the glaze frit in the way Abu’l-Qasim described, by pouring the
liquid melt into water ‘with a sound like thunder’, but uses a ground frit which he says
comes from Europe. This realistic piece of modernisation was the only way in which his
methods differed from past practice. He does not know what the material is, but it it
probably an alkaline frit, similar to the material prepared in the past. He adds powdered
glass to this frit, the same powder as is used in preparing the clay body. I do not
undersand why, but it works and there is no crazing in the glaze surface. I don’t think he
understands why either. This is what his father told him to do and he keeps to it. His
name is Haj Abbas Massoumzadeh. He is a simple man, and he is poor. He has an old
book of Sa’adi’s verses (his father’s) but Shahram says he probably cannot read it. He
sings with feeling and he seems to know much of Omar Khayyam and Sa’adi by heart
and probably the mystical lyrics of Hafez and other poetry besides. There are no signs
of his being a great potter: there were not many pots around at the time of our visit and,
as he says, the best of them were made by his father. But he has deep enthusiasm and
an engaging sense of humour. He knows his craft and is treated with affection and
respect by his neighbours, several of whom came in and out during our conversations.
What a fortunate encounter with an age-old tradition! It appeared to happen by chance,
yet it was one of those events that seem to have been waiting to come about for a long
time.

[4] If only his father had also been able to teach him about lustre (zarin fam) which
Abu’l-Qasim called ‘the enamel of two firings’! Perhaps that tradition really has died out.
If any reader knows any sign of its continuation in Iran today I should be grateful to hear
of it.

Slide Illustrations: Click on the thumbnails to see larger versions of these

pictures

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Two kiln
Downward Firebox
Preparing pegs
At the At the Trimming view with Preparing
the with a
wheel wheel the neck into the two stoke- the glaze
clay-paste shelf
kiln holes
on them

To read Abu'l-Qasim's treatise (1301) on pottery production,

go to this article by James Allan: “Abu’l-Qasim’s Treatise on Ceramics”