Glossary Pottery and vessels
Temper
Also called: tempered
Material such as sand, crushed rock, chaff or ground-up pottery that a potter mixes into clay to make it easier to shape and less likely to crack.
Pure clay shrinks and cracks as it dries and fires. Adding a non-plastic material opens up the body, lets moisture escape and helps cooking pots survive repeated heating. Specialists distinguish added temper from the grains that occur naturally in a clay, which are usually called inclusions.
Cypriot potters varied a good deal. Analyses of Red Polished Philia pottery find little sign of added mineral temper, suggesting that careful choice of clay did the work, while the coarser version of Bichrome ware contains quartz-rich sand. Clay tempered with chaff was also used for the walls of copper-smelting furnaces.
Related terms
- Fabric
The fired clay body of a pot as seen in a fresh break: its colour, hardness, texture and the grains and particles it contains.
- Levigation
Refining clay by stirring it in water, letting the coarse particles sink and drawing off the fine clay that stays suspended.
- Coarse ware
Everyday pottery made from gritty, heavily tempered clay, mostly cooking pots and storage vessels with little or no decoration.