Special Exhibitions
Conserving the Past for the Future
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Special Exhibitions |
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Conserving the Past for the Future |
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Introduction to Faience Faience, a ceramic-like material, must have seemed truly magical to the ancient Egyptians. Made from the very sand of the desert, it was transformed by fire into the sparkling blue of the Egyptian sky.Faience is made by combining large amounts of crushed silica (more than 90%) from quartz or flint with small amounts of alkali in the form of plant ash or desert salts, calcium in the form of limestone or lime, and a metallic colorant such as copper ore. Water is added to form a workable paste. After shaping, the faience dried and formed a crust of salts on the surface (a process known as efflorescence) which, when fired, produced a blue glaze over a gritty white body. Faience was appreciated for the beauty and brilliance of its jewel-like glazes as well as for its durability. Both properties are the result of the formation of glass when the ingredients in the paste combined during firing-both on the surface and between the particles of crushed silica. The formation of this glass is central to the magic of faience. Page 1 of 3 | On the next page: Faience Technology |
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