He was
undoubtedly a talented person. And not only talented - he was educated. In
those distant times, man learned from nature itself. To conquer her, it was
necessary to comprehend many of her secrets. People learned to use fire, grow
cereals, and process the skins of killed animals. They learned to make paints,
to make dishes out of stones, to build a home.
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| Ceramic Tableware. - Volga Bulgaria, XI-XIII centuries. |
One after
another, various crafts appeared in human society. The most ancient of them was
probably a pottery craft - making clay products.
Clay is a
malleable material. It is easy to give any form to her. Besides the fact that
clay is soft, plastic, it has one more remarkable property: after burning it
becomes hard as a stone.
However, the
earliest clay bowls and jugs, not yet decorated with anything, were
unattractive in all other respects. They had rough edges, uneven, rough walls.
They could not hold water for long: it seeped through the small pores found in
clay.
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| Glazed Ceramic Tableware |
For many
generations of potters, they thought about how to make the walls of clay
vessels impervious to moisture, smooth and beautiful. And one of them managed
to make such a vessel. Once a potter noticed a shiny spot on the jug after
firing.
- Where did it
come from? - the master was surprised.
The spot was smooth,
shiny. And the master thought that it would be nice to do such all the dishes.
But how to achieve this?
He began to
observe the roasting of his jugs. And what turned out? Shiny spots form where
sand mixed with bonfire ash falls on the walls of the jug. It was the first
glass glaze.
