General Information

FPF Ware is a distinctive type of fabric used for fine bowls/lamps. The bowls are often undecorated, but can sometimes have a red slip or paint on the exterior rim. The bowls usually have a flat string-cut disc base (though rounded bases are known), with distinctive turning marks on the exterior walls of the vessel. Firing of the vessel often leaves the exterior a whitish color, while the interior of the vessel is a pink matrix. Coarse-sized white, red, and black inclusions give the surface of the bowls a distinctive speckled appearance, particularly on the interior of the vessel. Soot marks on the rims of many of these bowls suggests that at least some were used as lamps.

FPF fabric is defined by conspicuous coarse rounded grey limestone (some greyer and more deteriorated looking than others), scattered medium to coarse rounded reddish mineral (grog?) and scattered coarse rounded blackish basalt-like inclusions. All three of these inclusions are apparent on the surface and give the vessel an attractive speckled appearance, particularly on the interior of the bowl. The exterior of the bowls is often a greenish hue of white. The firing is carefully controlled and the core is usually fired to a distinct khaki color.

Variations on this fabric can have different ratios of inclusions, sometimes favoring one of the three colors over another or having distinctly coarser versions of each. In publications, these variants are marked as FPF+. Whether these differences are related to different batches of clay, a different potters, or different workshops is not known.