Egyptian faience is an extension of the term faience. Faience describes Islamic and European tin-glazed earthenware, and has been extended to describe the ceramic faience of pre-Dynastic and Pharaonic Egypt, Crete and sites in the Indus Valley civilization. European, Egyptian and Indus Valley faience was not made of clay but rather was a ceramic composed primarily of quartz. These types of faience beads are also known from prehistoric sites^[1] in Ireland. Whether they were imported or manufactured there is unknown at present (Waddell, 1998). Blue faience was manufactured by grinding quartz into a fine powder then fusing by heat with a glaze of malachite, blue azurite and powdered talc. This may have been manufactured as a substitute for mineral turquoise. Faience or faïence is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed earthenware on a delicate pale buff body. ... Earthenware is a particularly common type of ceramic material and is used extensively for tableware and decorative objects. ... Excavated ruins of Mohenjo-daro, Sindh, Pakistan. ... The Gay Head cliffs in Marthas Vineyard are made almost entirely of natural clays. ... Fixed Partial Denture, or Bridge The word ceramic is derived from the Greek word κεραμικος (keramikos, potters earth, or pottery). The term covers inorganic non-metallic materials whose formation is due to the action of heat. ... Quartz is amongst one of the most common minerals in the Earths continental crust. ... Quartz is amongst one of the most common minerals in the Earths continental crust. ... Malachite from the Democratic Republic of Congo Malachite is a carbonate mineral, copper(II) carbonate hydroxide Cu2CO3(OH)2. ... Fresh, unweathered stalactitic azurite crystals showing the exceptionally deep blue of unaltered azurite. ... Talc block Talcum Powder Talc is a mineral composed of hydrated magnesium silicate with the chemical formula H2Mg3(SiO3)4 or Mg3Si4O10(OH)2. ... This article is about the gem. ...

John E. Dayton, in Minerals, Metals, Glazing and Man, observes that this early faience, compounded of quartz sand with potash (potassium oxide) or natron (hydrous sodium carbonate), had a self-glazing property; raw faience was a "sandy mass" that bonded together "by the incipient glass around each grain of sand," and also acquired a surface glaze through the same process. Thus, Dayton defines early faience as "a self-glazing paste of sand" or "self-glazing quartz paste." This self-glazing property would likely have been critical in the ancients' discovery and development of glazing their pottery (see ceramic glaze). Potash Potash (or carbonate of potash) is an impure form of potassium carbonate (K2CO3) mixed with other potassium salts. ... Natron is a white, crystalline hygroscopic mineral salt, primarily a mixture of sodium bicarbonate (common baking soda) and sodium carbonate (soda ash) with small amounts of sodium chloride (table salt) and sodium sulfate. ...

Faience, like other ceramic materials, but unlike glass or metals, is unsuitable for recycling—even the earliest faience objects like simple beads can survive millenia intact. Ancient faience, like ancient glasses, ceramics, pigments, and glazes, often had a dozen components or more, making analyses difficult and descriptions only approximate.

Note

1. ^ Waddell, J. The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland. Wordwell, Dublin, 1998.

References

• Predynastic Egyptian faience beads.
• Dunn Friedman, Florence. "Ancient Egyptian faience", Magazine Antiques, September 1998
• Dayton, John E. Minerals, Metals, Glazing and Man. Harrap Publishers, Edinburgh, 1978.