Leather bookbindings, pigments for paints and majolica (white-glazed pottery) all came from the East, although the Venetians never succeeded in imitating the perfect ruby glaze of Iznik pottery.

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Voices travel up from the ground floor in a smokestack effect and ricochet around the preserved glazed-white brick walls. (The "new" library prefers buzz over the code of silence of the old library.) How different from the older sections of the library where, for instance, one reading room has restored its carved plaster ceiling reproducing Michelangelo's Laurentian Library in Florence.

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The blossoms can either be matte white (known as bisque in the pottery world) or glazed.

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Houman would introduce Willis to masters of other crafts, including zellige (glazed tile mosaic), gebs (carved and incised white plaster) and mashrabiya (intricately carved cedar for pierced screens).

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