Egyptian faience

The term faience, describing Islamic and European tin-glazed earthenware, has been extended to describe the ceramic faience of pre-Dynastic and Pharaonic Egypt and sites in the Indus Valley civilization. Egyptian and Indus Valley faience was not made of clay but rather was a ceramic composed primarily of quartz. Blue faience was manufactured by grinding quartz into a fine powder then fusing by heat with a glaze of malachite, blue azurite and powdered talc. This may have been manufactured as a subsitute for mineral turquoise.

References

*Predynastic Egyptian faience beads.
* Dunn Friedman, Florence. "Ancient Egyptian faience", Magazine Antiques, September 1998