Kate Schuricht-photo Stephen Brayne
Faience or faïence is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed earthenware on a delicate pale buff body. The invention of a pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major advance in the history of pottery.
The invention seems to have been made in Iran or the Middle East before the ninth century. A kiln capable of producing high temperatures exceeding 1000° C was required to achieve this result (see pottery), the result of millennia of refined pottery-making traditions.
