The Frit Ceramic from the Tsarevskoye Settlement in Storage of the State Historical Museum

Abstract

The article contains the results of analysis of frit ceramic and tiles, originating from the excavation and collections from the Tsarevskoye settlement, which are stored in the Golden Horde stock of the State Historical Museum. The accumulation of the materials occurred from the second half of 19th century until the second half of 20th century. There are gifts of local residents, purchases of the famous collectors of that time, items from the excavations of A.V. Tereshchenko and the materials of the Volga archaeological expedition. The main idea of this work is to bring together all frit ceramic of different time collections and analyze from the point of view of technological, morphological and decorative features of its production. It is necessary to consider how the composition of the frit dough affected the decorative design of the surface and the shape of the vessel, to identify the most stable combinations between the composition of the dough, the type and color of the covering glaze and decor. It is necessary to track the frequency of use of transparent and opaque glazes, their correlation with overglaze or underglaze decor or lack of it, to identify the most characteristic colors of glazes for the monument and ways to apply them. For this goal, all items were collected in a common database, where all the features were entered and a step-by-step analysis of each fragment was performed from at least eight positions.