Opaque yellow ware

Opaque yellow ware was made and used at Nishapur in the ninth and tenth centuries, after which its manufacture seems to have died out; its glaze takes colour and opacity from a tin-bearing yellow engobe, and its decoration is almost always in green. ¹

Its reddish body is like that of the colour-splashed and black on white wares; the green spots and strokes, from copper, were probably applied after the glaze was poured and often decayed before the rest of the surface; where the glaze has decayed, the yellow is left as a powdery layer the colour of dry mustard. ¹ A coarse ware resembling it is still made at Nishapur, Wilkinson notes, though with black in the decoration and the yellow not covering the whole surface. ¹

Wilkinson holds that it did not originate at Nishapur but probably in Iraq, as an imitation of imported Chinese pieces; it has been found at Ctesiphon and Samarra in better quality than at Nishapur — harder, thinner, more golden, without the Nishapur greenish cast. ¹ It was also made in Syria, at Tarsus and al-Mina, and found at Dhahran in Arabia. ¹ It was popular at Nishapur in many shapes: bowls, dishes, lamps, pitchers and small jars with decorative lugs. ¹