Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c7.s5.16

c7.s5.16

Faience was prepared from powdered quartz, or sometimes also with a binding material from steatite mixed with a powdered glaze which was then fired to form a vitreous substance that was finally glazed. In the process of manufacture a suitable colour was given to it by adding various mineral substances. The process of manufacture was complex. Three objects of faience are of high artistic merit, viz. a nibbling squirrel, a couchant ram and a figure of coalescing monkeys. Faience objects have been found in Mesopotamia, Syria, Western Asia and Egypt. Perhaps the Harappan people borrowed it from their neighbours in Mesopotamia where its use is popular at all levels of the excavated sites.