marbled pottery

marbled pottery, a type of ware obtained by mixing clays of various colours to imitate natural marbles or agate. The working of marbled pottery can be traced back at least as far as the 1st century ad in Rome, and samples of the ware were produced as far from Rome as China. Techniques included the use of decorative bands of white-, brown-, and gray-marbled clay; tortoiseshell, obtained by mottling glazes with manganese brown; laying the slabs of variously coloured clay on each other and beating them out into a homogeneous mass (agate ware); and mingling coloured clay slips (liquid clay) on the surface of a clay form.