GLAZES, as applied to ceramic wares, are essentially glasses. It is generally believed that the first 'manufactured' glass was seen as a glaze on the surface of ceramic vessels around 3,500 BC, some 3,500 years after the first ceramic articles appeared. The earliest glazes would have been 'slips' (aqueous suspensions) of selected clays with the addition, when necessary, of a fluxing material. By the third millennium BC, the basic raw materials for glass manufacture were used to produce glazes on pots and vases throughout much of what is now called the Middle East. Traders, merchants and sailors spread this new technology, and high temperature (stoneware) glazes, based upon quicklime and wood ash, had appeared in China before 1,400 BC. These were soon followed by feldspathic glazes, similar to many in use today.
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