Istarif is a pottery production area northwest of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. It is a small village with a population of about 300. The clay is collected from the nearby mountains and shaped on a potter’s wheel made of walnut or poplar. The entire piece is then covered with white clay.
Blue and green low-fired glazes were used, with copper used for the blue coloration and lead oxide for the green. In addition, floral and geometric patterns are engraved. The kiln is cylindrical inside and surrounded by a cube of sun-dried bricks, each side measuring about 2.5 to 3 meters, with a firing chamber in the upper part and a fire chamber in the lower part. Wood is used as fuel, and approximately 500 to 1,000 pieces of vessels are fired in a single firing. Firing is completed in about nine hours at a temperature of 800 to 850 degrees Celsius. Pottery is a seasonal industry from May to October, and the main products are pots, plates, clay figurines, and other miscellaneous vessels, which are generally fragile. 25 kilns were in operation in 1964, and the daily production of skilled workers was 80 pots with a diameter of 25cm. It is one of the most representative remaining production centers of old-fashioned ceramics in West Asia. (Koukuni Yoshida, “Technology of West Asia”)
