Faience: A Lost Art

Patricia Griffin, Assistant Conservator of Objects

Aside from its inherent and timeless beauty, faience is an amazing technical achievement. Ancient Egyptian craftsmen crushed sand and salt, then added a bit of pulverized limestone and copper, which when fired produced the brilliant blue glaze associated with faience. These materials were mixed in different proportions to create Egyptian blue, the world's first synthetic pigment, which also was used to make objects with a matte blue surface similar in appearance to the precious stone lapus lazuli. For more than 5,000 years they adapted and improved upon these simple recipes to create objects that reflect both technical virtuosity and magical opulence. The process still retains its magic and mystery for modern-day scholars.

In order to understand how the ancient Egyptians made faience and Egyptian blue, conservator Mimi Leveque of the Rhode Island School of Design and I had to become modern faience craftsmen. A number of experiments varying the amount of sand, salt, stone, and colorant helped to decipher the range of techniques used to create the masterpieces in Gifts of the Nile. Our collaboration is reflected in the technical section of the exhibition.

Work at the Cleveland Museum of Art was begun as part of the research for a catalogue of the museum's Egyptian collection, to be published later this year. The faience experiments have been an ongoing activity at the nearby facilities of the Cleveland Institute of Art with the aid of Kelly Palmer, ceramics instructor for cia's continuing education program. Three different glazing processes have been successfully reproduced. Simple objects using the Institute's collection of molds were created in order to understand the effects of different types of mixtures. Some modeling, carving, and joining of separately made components has also been attempted. The next stage of this work will be to make actual replicas of CMA objects to test theories about manufacture.

Scientific analysis has proved to be a vital component of the project. Using small samples taken from real objects in the museum and large samples taken from experimental reproductions, the microscopic structure of the material is examined and analyzed with the aid of the scanning electron microscopea machine capable of magnifying samples by many thousands. This research has been a collaboration between the museum and skilled professionals at the Materials Science Division of NASA Lewis Research Center, who have developed their own appreciation for the technical mastery of the ancient Egyptians while consulting on the project. Images taken by microscopists Serene Farmer and Duane Dixon at NASA and John Sears at Case Western Reserve University are featured in the technical section of the exhibition. All of this experimental and analytical work may help to unravel the mysteries held by these ancient and precious works of art.