Talk:Fritware

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2020 and 7 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nldimick, JStilwell.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:30, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Possible copyright violation

I'm concerned that the text of this article may have been cut and pasted from a copyrighted source. Most of the text was added by an anonymous ip on 6 Dec 2010 to create this version. The bracketed numbers are the inline citations. I haven't been able to identify the source. Aa77zz (talk) 11:08, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

A false alarm - the text was pasted from the Wikipedia article on frit - and the numbers are the inline citations in that article. These need to be added back to this article. Aa77zz (talk) 06:45, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Merger

I'm proposing that this page be merged with Islamic stone-paste. I am not aware enough about the subject to make this decision definitively. It seems that Fritware and Islamic Stone-Paste may be the same type of pottery, but developed through two separate traditions. That said, they should probably occupy one page that notes both names, and then explains the two different traditions. I don't think there is a need for two pages where the first line expressly acknowledges that fritware and Islamic stone-paste are the same thing. Magic1million (talk) 16:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

As far as Iznik pottery is concerned, fritware and stonepaste are the same thing. In London the British Museum uses stonepaste while the Victoria and Albert Museum uses fritware. I agree that the articles should be merged. I'm not sure which term should be kept for the title. Fritware is perhaps more self explanatory. Aa77zz (talk) 18:39, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

What about Frit, which goes way back in Ancient Egypt? My chemistry isn't strong enough to work out if that is the same, or close enough. If it is, they could both go under that. In fact I see from above that most of this is copied from Frit, perhaps rather pointlessly. Johnbod (talk) 22:19, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

As frit is ground glass, I think it might be better to keep a short article on Frit and combine those on stonepaste and fritware into one article called Fritware. Fritware/stonepaste only contains a small amount of frit. It is a composite material prepared by mixing frit + ground quartz + clay in the approx ratio of 1:10:1 and heating. The ground glass melts and the mixture fuses together. Mason & Tite (1994), in their article The beginnings of Islamic stonepaste technology start with this: "The siliceous ceramic body called stonepaste (also known elsewhere as quartz-frit-clay paste, quartz-frit, fritware, faience, artificial paste, and kashi) was used to make all the important types of Islamic ceramic from at least AD 1179 onwards. The date of 1179 is provided by the earliest piece with a date inscribed on it, but presumably stonepaste had existed before that date. Important Islamic ceramic types made in stonepaste included the lustre-wares, decorated with a metallic overglaze pigment, and the underglaze-painted pottery which became dominant after AD 1300, including the blue and white style influenced by Chinese porcelain and the polychrome ‘Iznik’ ware associated with Ottoman Turkey."

There is also a Wikipedia article on Egyptian faience. Mason & Tite have this to say: "Siliceous ceramics certainly existed in pre-Islamic times in Egypt and Mesopotamia, with production of so-called Egyptian faience and Egyptian blue. This technology persisted in Iran, until recent times, presumably as a continuing tradition, for making beads ... Normally the ground quartz bodies were probably held together before firing with an organic binder, and the glaze then stabilized the material during firing. ... The fact that this use of added glass fragments and clay was limited and rare, linked with the apparent absence of siliceous vessels for late pre-Islamic periods would argue that Islamic stonepaste was an independent invention." Egyptian faience appears to sufficiently different to warrant its own article. Aa77zz (talk) 12:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I'll go with that. I would suggest Islamic stone-paste is less likely to be confused with Egyptian frit. Johnbod (talk) 15:12, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

• Nearly 3 years later, I've slightly changed my mind & will merge to Fritware per above. Johnbod (talk) 20:23, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Stonepaste

Hi, a colleague recently asked me to look at the "fritware" page after I told them that there was no such thing as fritware. Just so you know, on the "fritware" page I'd say that I am the most cited author. My research has shown that this material is not and does not include frit, and "fritware" is a term that seems to be used by people that don't understand technology. Any technologically-aware author uses the term "stonepaste", including Goffer who is cited several times in the first para even though it is a tertiary source. I was thinking of starting a page on stonepaste, but I see there used to be one and it was rolled under fritware by you.

RBJM (talk) 20:02, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

There's no use pretending the term "fritware" doesn't exist. As I'm sure you know, the literature is full of it, though I see the BM and others now prefer "stonepaste", though Grove it seems only partly so. I only acted on a "move request" that had been sitting for 2 years with no one opposing it. See the "Merger" section just above. Since both pages said the two terms were alternatives for the same thing, this was correct - possibly it should have been merged in the other direction. Here's the other one before merging. I have only tidied the merge & made other small edits, & have never seen the main refs used. The original main editor (of Is-p) is no longer active, but others are. I will copy this to the article talk page, where more interested editors are likely to see it. Is "Islamic stone-paste" the best title, do you think? Please answer at the other page [ie here]. 04:28, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Thoughts, anyone? Johnbod (talk) 04:48, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• Ferro Corporation (website) manufacture a range of frits for the "dinnerware, cookware and giftware industries"; they're used by studio potters to produce fritware (article in Ceramics Monthly). The recipe given in that article is one-third Ferro frit. I'm guessing that the frit-using industry probably uses the term "stoneware" for commercial wares- I've never seen "fritware" stamped under any piece of china! Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 12:23, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Johnbod that sources are split as to whether to use the term "stonepaste" or "fritware".
Museum websites:

Stonepaste

• British Museum (linked above and repeated here)
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art: example

Fritware

• Victoria and Albert Museum: example
• Harvard Art Museums: example
• Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge: example
• Art Institute of Chicago: example

The printed sources are also split. Most of the books I own, admittedly written by art historians, use fritware. Here are some of them:

• Walter B. Denny (2004): "Although many different names have been applied to this type of ceramic in the Islamic world and in Europe, today the preferred name in English for the mixture of potter's clay, ground-up quartz and glassy frit is fritware.": Denny, Walter B. (2004). Iznik: the artistry of Ottoman ceramics. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-500-51192-3.
• Oliver Watson (2004) uses fritware and doesn't mention stonepaste as far as I can see: Watson, Oliver (2004). Ceramics from Islamic Lands. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-97634-1.
• Maria Queiroz Ribeiro (2009) uses fritware: Queiroz Ribeiro, Maria (2009). Iznik pottery and tiles in the Calouste Gulbenkian collection. Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. ISBN 978-972-8848-58-3.
• Arthur Millner (2015): "This material goes under a number of names, most commonly "fritware" or more recently "stonepaste": Millner, Arthur (2015). Damascus Tiles. Munich: Prestel Verlag. p. 21. ISBN 978-3-7913-8147-3.

RBJM wrote above "My research has shown that this material is not and does not include frit ..." If this were true then much of the article would be incorrect as would most of the sources including Goffer 2006 who claims that stonepaste includes frit. It is not clear to me why RBJM believes that the material does not include frit. What does he understand by frit?

• Mason & Tite (1994) have "frit-glass" in the abstract
• Tite, Wolf & Mason (2011) mention "glass fragments added to the bodies" so why is this not frit?
• Henderson & Raby (1989) is technical and uses fritware and frit: Henderson, J.; Raby, J. (1989). "The technology of fifteenth century Turkish tiles: an interim statement on the origins of the Iznik industry". World Archaeology: Ceramic Technology. 21 (1): 115–132. doi:10.1080/00438243.1989.9980094. JSTOR 124488.

According to my Webster's dictionary the word frit can mean either "a) the calcined or partly fused materials of which glass is made, or b) any of various chemically complex glasses used ground esp. to introduce soluble or unstable ingredients into glazes or enamels." The Oxford Dictionary has: "1 frɪt ▶ noun [mass noun] the mixture of silica and fluxes which is fused at high temperature to make glass . mixture of silica and fluxes which is fused at high temperature material Glassmaking frit ■ a calcined and pulverized mixture similar to frit, used to make soft-paste porcelain or ceramic glazes . similar calcined and pulverized mixture used to make soft-paste porcelain or ceramic glazes material Pottery"

To summarise: I don't have strong arguments for whether the wikipedia article should be under fritware rather than stonepaste. I slightly prefer stonepaste to stone-paste but dislike Islamic stone-paste. The dictionary definitions above suggest that frit can either refer to a partly fused mixture when manufacturing glass or to crushed and powdered glass. The article uses the second meaning. - Aa77zz (talk) 15:31, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for a very quick & full response, Aa77zz! As can be seen in the previous section, I have no strong feelings on fritware vs stonepaste. I didn't explain my change of mind in 2015, but I suspect it was a feeling that, while stonepaste is becoming the standard term, for our audience fritware was still more likely to be familiar. I totally agree we need to sort the actual substantive issue of the ingredients, which is really more important. I hope you & RBJM will continue to hammer this out; you're both much more familiar with this area than I am. Perhaps RBJM may not understand how redirects work - all of:

Islamic stone-paste

Stone-paste

Stonepaste

- have taken the reader directly to this page since the merge. Johnbod (talk) 15:49, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I hope I am doing this right, I haven't had much experience! I'd just like to thank you for your interest in this, I know you all are very active in creating this very useful resource. In the refernces above, I am Mason. I'm not sure a general dictionary is useful in this, but as it turns out Wikipedia's article on what frit actually is seems spot-on. Frit strictly is a product of sintering quartz and flux elements together, a process that is used in the solid-state creation of glass. What is added to stonepast is glass, not frit: 8 parts of quartz, one part of clay, and one part of glass. The mediaeval treatises say this, and my research confirmed this, as the inclusions represent recrystallised bodies that were originally entirely vitreous. I'm sure if Henderson wrote about it now, he would call it stonepaste. In my original paper with Mike Tite, we may have used the term "frit" in the abstract so people understood what we were talking about, but the text itself would have made it clearer. Goffer's book is actually very general, with only a paragraph on this, and this "9th century origin" I think comes from his text but the real source is not given, which is actually another paper by me. Stonepaste is actually a translation of the Persian term for this material. I would not favour "Islamic Stonepaste" as Islam is a religion, not a technology. By the way, the ancient material is distinctly different, not having clay in the composition. RBJM (talk) 17:47, 7 February 2017 (UTC)