Vases, cups, food containers, fruit bowls, pottery tiles glazed with bright colors over a table in the middle of the living room - items all made of pottery, making fine decorative touches in my own house, and giving me a sense of pleasure whenever I use them. As a child I tried my hand at using clay to make cups and toys. Those early adventures seem to have left in me a special liking for this raw material, which may take various forms of glazed or unglazed pottery for utility or decorative purposes.
I was looking for a place to get clay, the raw material of pottery. I wanted my son to feel it with his own fingers and get used to its touch. I wanted to provoke his innate skills, hoping he will be able to explore a new world that could be interesting and fulfilling to him. I had to go to Al-Fustat, in the old part of Cairo, to find the clay. It is a place full of ateliers, workshops of artist potters and artisans, where I was to get my clay and much more.
Approaching Al-Fustat, I found a pretty large building, which I later found out was the Fustat Pottery Center, a training center for artist potters and artisans affiliated to the National Centre for Plastic Arts. The completed first stage of this pottery center which covers an area of 2,400 m2 includes workshops, kilns, exhibition halls, and studios where Egyptian and foreign artists are accommodated. The designer of the Center, Gamal Aref, says this site was chosen for the project because this is where the atelier of Saeed Al-Sadr, the pioneer of modern Egyptian pottery, was situated. Many distinguished potters like Mohamed Mandour, Nabil Darweesh and Mohieddin Hussein were trained here. I got the clay I wanted, but as I was leaving I had an urge to know more about the history of this fine art.
I headed for the Museum of Islamic Pottery, a stunning place where the exquisite exhibits blend beautifully with an architectural environment of an Islamic character. The items on display have been excavated in several Islamic countries, and are thus characterized by variety in terms of shape and methods of production and decoration. There are separate pavilions for the artifacts of different ages and styles, Fatimid art in one, Mameluke, Omayyad and Ayyoubi exhibits in another, and Turkish, Persian, Syrian and other styles in a third. The works of Muslim master potters are of particular significance in the history of pottery, and rank among the world's masterpieces. The visit was enriching, but I was still unsatisfied.
I paid a visit to the library of the Islamic Art Museum where I looked up the subject. One of the books I chanced to find, The Meaning of Art by Herbert Reed, identifies pottery as the simplest and most difficult of all arts at one and the same time. It is the simplest because it is the most primitive, and the most difficult because it is the most abstract. Historically, pottery is one of the earliest arts that appeared in the world. The oldest known crockery, which impresses modern viewers, was manually made from earthenware clay and left in the open to dry and become hardened by the heat of the sun. When fire was discovered man learned to make crockery harder and more durable. When the wheel was invented and potters were able to introduce rhythm and the effect of upward movement to their concept of form, all the prerequisites of this abstract art form became available. The art developed from its earliest humble origins into a form that became representative of the most cultured and sensitive race known in the fifth century B.C. An ancient Greek vase is considered a model of classical harmony. When Eastern civilizations emerged, pottery became the most favorite and expressive form of art, and reached more refined heights than the Greek version of the art. While a Greek vase is an example of static harmony, a Chinese vase, when freed from the forced influences of other cultures and alien artistic styles, becomes an example of dynamic harmony. It is hardly a decorative object, but almost a real flower.
Islamic Art and Architecture, by Tawfiq Ahmed Abdel Gawwad, notes that pottery was not significant in pre-Islamic ages because art patrons in that early stage of history used metal urns made from gold or silver only. But with the advent of Islam, profligacy was censured, and the use of silverware, gold and extravagantly decorated articles was prohibited. Interest in pottery therefore grew significantly. Innovative forms were introduced to replace metal vessels. Pottery with gilded relief ornaments appeared for the first time as the earliest example of glazed pottery, a uniquely Islamic innovation that flourished in Basra, Iraq, in the ninth century A.D. and had no parallel in other civilizations that preceded Islam. The Chinese did not know this form of art in spite of their superb talent at producing pottery and porcelain. Arab pottery moved from a stage of imitating the Chinese style to one of innovation and emphasis on a distinct Arab artistic identity. The new form of pottery spread from Iraq where it first appeared to Egypt after its conquest by Ahmed Ibn Tuloun. It reached its apex in the Fatimid era.
Fatimid pottery was decorated with human, animal and bird figures as well as floral or geometrical patterns, inscriptions in the beautiful Kufi script, and scenes of dancing, music and hunting. Sometimes it featured scenes from everyday-life activities like cane fencing, wrestling and cockfights. A Persian traveler, Nasseri Khusru, who visited Cairo in the reign of the Caliph Al-Muntasser Billah, noted in his travel diaries that all kinds of pottery were produced in Egypt, including delicate and transparent kinds. Cups, bowls, urns, plates and other wares were made and colorfully decorated to produce changing colors when light fell on it, Khusru noted. Dishes of Cairene pottery with metallic glaze may now be found in various churches in Pisa, Italy, where they were brought by tourists who donated them to the church as beautiful artifacts.
The pottery industry in Fatimid Egypt suffered a setback when raiders burned down the Fustat factories during the Crusades. With the fall of the Fatimid dynasty in 1711 A.D. the new rulers of Egypt, the Ayyoubis, fought the Shiite sect of their predecessors. Many artists and potters had to leave for Persia, where the new art flourished in the late sixth century A.H. (Muslim calendar).
The Ayyoubi age, however, was marked by a growing interest in a new kind of pottery, which used fine clay and beautiful glazing. Black patterns and plant shapes interspersed by beautiful birds characterize it and animals set against green backgrounds. In the thirteenth century A.D. (7th century A.H.) a fine kind of pottery appeared in Cairo, which depended on white clay on which black patterns were drawn under green, blue or purple glazes. Sometimes the patterns were drawn in various colors (red, blue and black) under a transparent glaze. This kind of pottery was often decorated with human figures - two persons in a sailing boat, an encounter under a tree, a person holding a goblet, a person playing the harp, or a mounted knight, in addition to figures of birds and animals that show remarkable skill and dynamism. One of the beautiful designs that can be seen on a pottery item in the Islamic Art Museum, Cairo, is the figure of Madonna holding Christ. Another part of this particular ware, which shows saints with winged angels above their heads, is kept in a museum in Athens.
Pottery of the Mameluke age was decorated by animal figures painted in black and blue under a transparent glaze against a background of floral patterns very close to natural forms. It shows the Persian influence since many artists and potters had to move from Persia and Iraq to the Levant and Egypt during the Moghul-Mameluke wars.
Another kind of pottery in the Mameluke age influenced by Persian pottery appeared in the mid fourteenth Century A.D. It shows the Chinese influence in the blue patterns set against white backgrounds, and in the figures based on dragons and phoenixes and other animals, birds and aquatic plants drawn in line with the Chinese style.
There was also a utility kind of pottery, which was cheaper and more commonly used. It is the enameled, multi-color type used in kitchen and domestic utensils. The body of the utensil was made from common red or black clay and covered with a white lining on which colored enamel patterns were drawn. The decorations were grooved into the lining, sometimes using dark hazel outlines. A transparent glaze was then applied. Decorations were sometimes scratched into the background under the transparent glaze, or sometimes added as projections by using glazed clop slip pressed through a piping bag. Egyptian potters who made this kind of pottery managed to find cheap material to produce items for daily use that had their own kind of beauty.
Enameled pottery wares were decorated with various geometrical figures like the sun disc, ribbons, braids, and intertwining floral patterns that were sometimes being pyramidally arranged. They were sometimes decorated with various animal and bird figures, and in a few cases with human figures like mounted hunters, sailors holding anchors, and people drinking or listening to song and music. An important decorative element in this Mameluke kind of pottery was inscription. The name, title and occupation of the owner of the ware and prayers for his well-being were sometimes inscribed in beautiful thuluth or other swift scripts.
In the second half of the fifteenth century A.D. the pottery industry in Egypt began to decline as the market was flooded by Chinese porcelain, which was in high demand. The industry also deteriorated largely since Egypt fell to the Turks in 1517 A.D. and began to import pottery from Asia Minor.
Having read that much, I was eager to see modern works of pottery. At the Opera House, the Fifth Cairo Pottery Biennial is being held; potters from Egypt, Arab countries, East Asia, Europe and America participated in the event bringing the artistic and cultural legacies and traditions of their respective countries and their own personal experience. Some of the exhibits are remarkably beautiful, other remarkably peculiar. Arab potters from Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Kuwait, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Qatar and Lebanon exhibited works that ranged from the classical to the idiosyncratic. Two Egyptian potters, Hassan Heshmat and Mohamed Al-Shaarawi, were honored in the event
By Samar Dweidar
