rt of Syria played a more important part than has generally
been supposed in the development of the potter's art at this period.

_Persian Pottery_.--The most important pottery of the nearer East,
whether considered on its own merits or from the influence it has
exercised on the pottery of later times, is that so highly valued by
collectors under the distinctive name of Persian; though much that
passes under that name may not have been made in Persia. From the 10th
to the 16th centuries the craftsmen of Persia were perfect masters of
decorative design and colour; and, as potters, they possessed a sense of
the forms proper to clay, such as none of the great races of antiquity
ever exhibited. The shapes of Greek pottery speak more strongly of metal
than of clay, but the best Persian work exhibits a feeling for the
material that has rarely been equalled. The shapes are not only true
clay-shapes but they are designed so as best to exhibit the qualities of
the glaze and colour with which they were to be decorated. Certainly
from the 12th to the 16th centuries the pottery of the Persians must
rank among the greatest achievements of the potter's art. The ware was
shaped from various mixtures such as we have already spoken of--but
whether its body was a mixture of white clay with a large proportion of
sand, or some inferior clay that burnt to a yellowish or red tint, and
was surfaced with a fine white coating of siliceous slip, or with a
mixture of soda-glass, clay and oxide of tin, which made it whiter
still--the one aim was to produce a white pottery. On this white
ground--with a coarsish absorbent surface--beautiful patterns, in
conventional floral or animal forms, were deftly painted in
cobalt-blues, manganese-purples, copper-greens and turquoise, with
mixtures for intermediate tints; while a strong brownish-black outline
colour was compounded by mixing the oxides of iron and manganese, to be
turned into a fine, still black by the addition of a trace of cobalt and
later of oxide of chromium. Over this freely painted colour, often used
in broad flat masses, a singularly limpid alkaline glaze, generally of
considerable thickness, was fired until it just fused; and the resultant
effect is of the most rich and brilliant colour relieved on a ground of
slightly toned white. Judging from fragments which have been found at
Rai, and which can scarcely therefore be later than the 13th century, we
find the characteristic Persian style