rich dark purple, or dark green, or golden brown* Sometimes they are diapered all over by the pate-sur-p&ie method, with a conventional flower, the seventy or lotus, of a lighter color than the ground* Generally they are ornamented with the universal knop and flower pattern, in compartments formed all round the bowl, by spaces alternately left uncolored and glazed in color* Sometimes a wreath of the knop and flower pattern is simply painted round the bowl on a white ground [Plate 72]*
Mr, Drury Fortnum, in his report on the pottery at the Inter national Exhibition of 1871, observes of the Sindh pottery: u The turquoise blue painted on a paste beneath a glaze, which might have been unearthed in Egypt or Phoenicia — a small bottle painted in blue or white — is of the same blood and bone as the ancient wares of Thebes . . * . But the tiles are very important,
- * * * They are in general character similar to, although not so
carefully made as, the Oriental tiles known as Persian, which adorn the old mosques of Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Persia , « , , The colours used upon them are rich copper green, a golden brown, and dark and turquoise blue * . . * The antiquary, the artist, and the manufacturer will do well to study these wares* As in their silk and woollen fabrics, their metal work and other manufactures, an inherent feeling for and a power of producing harmony in the distribution of color and in surface decoration exists among the Orientals, which we should study to imitate, if not to copy. It is not for Europeans to establish schools of art, in a country the productions of whose remote districts are a school of art in themselves, far more capable of teaching than of being taught/ 1
It is a rare pleasure to the eye to see in the polished corner of a native room one of these large turquoise blue sweetmeat jars on a fine Kirman rug of minimum red ground, splashed with dark blue and } r eIlow. But the sight of wonder is, when travel- ling over the plains of Persia or India, suddenly to come upon m encaustic-tiled mosque* It is colored all over in yellow,
