Blue pottery designs divide into two pattern families: floral and geometric. Inside a Multan workshop, though, nobody calls them that. Each pattern has a name, the names are how pieces are ordered and priced, and learning a dozen of them is the difference between buying blind and knowing what you are looking at.

This is the vocabulary, taken from our own order book rather than from a museum label.

The two pattern families

Floral. Stylised lotus flowers under lobed arches, fleshy palmette leaves against a cobalt ground, rosettes, scrolling stems and tendrils. Nineteenth century Multan vases in auction catalogues carry exactly these elements, which is how you know the floral repertoire is old and not a recent commercial invention.

Geometric. Stars, crosses, lozenges, meanders and interlocking repeats. Geometric work dominates architectural tile, where a pattern has to continue across a wall without a visible seam. On a vessel it usually appears as banding: a geometric border top and bottom, floral work in the field between.

Most pieces use both. The geometric work frames, the floral work fills.

The tile side of this vocabulary is set out in our article on the intricate tile work from Multan. The colours themselves, and why cobalt and turquoise behave the way they do in the kiln, are covered in the colours of blue ceramic in Multan. This article is about pattern.

Bharai, and why Full Bharai costs more

The single most useful word to know is bharai, filling.

Bharai describes how much of the surface the painter covers. On a lightly painted piece the white ground is part of the design and the pattern sits in reserved panels. On a Full Bharai piece the ground is filled: pattern runs across the whole surface with almost no plain white left.

Full Bharai costs more, and the reason is hours. The painting is done freehand with a brush, one piece at a time, and filling a surface completely can take several times longer than painting a panel and leaving the rest white. The clay, the glaze and the firing are identical. What you pay for is painting time.

That is also why Full Bharai comes in colourways rather than as one design. Our dinner sets carry Full Bharai Red, Full Bharai Yellow and Full Bharai Ferozi, and the vases and lamps add green, brown and turquoise. The density is the design; the colour is the variant.

Multani blue pottery motifs and design names you will actually meet

These are workshop names, not academic classifications. They are what a Multan painter, a wholesaler and our own catalogue all use, and they are the terms to quote if you want a specific pattern repeated across a set.

Full Bharai , fully filled ground, the densest and most labour intensive work. Sold by colourway: red, yellow, ferozi, green, brown.
New Kashi , a current house pattern rather than a historic one. Kashi is the craft itself, so the name means something close to “the new one”.
Ghulab Kashi , named for the rose, gulab. Rose centred floral work.
Ghori Chain , a linked, repeating border treatment.
Zangeer , from zanjeer, chain. Chain pattern.
Ring Blue and Ring Green , banded ring designs, named by their colour.
TRD and TRD Multi , a catalogue design family, the multi version using several colours instead of one.
Sareena, Khaadi and Multani Design , further named patterns carried on specific shapes.
China Kashi, Special Kashi and Bamboo Shoot , older design families still worked in Multan workshops.

Two things worth saying plainly about this list. First, it is not standardised: two workshops can use the same name for slightly different patterns, because the names were never registered anywhere. Second, it is not complete and never will be, because painters add patterns. A design family in blue pottery is a living thing, closer to a recipe than to a catalogue number.

Multani art design: how to judge the painting

Once you can name the patterns, the next question is whether a given piece is painted well. Four things to look at, in order:

Line confidence. A good painter draws a stem in one stroke. Look for lines that taper and vary in width naturally. Hesitation shows as wobble, retouching and overlapping marks where a line was corrected.

Spacing. In a repeating border, the gaps should hold their rhythm the whole way round. Where the pattern meets itself again, a skilled painter has planned the spacing so the join is hard to find. A rushed one squeezes or stretches the last few repeats.

Symmetry that is not mechanical. Hand painted work is close to symmetrical and never exactly symmetrical. Perfect symmetry means a transfer or a decal, not a brush.

Glaze over the paint. The pattern sits under the glaze, so it should look slightly sunk into a glassy surface rather than printed on top of it. Colour that sits proud of the surface, or that you can catch with a fingernail, has been applied over the glaze.

Why two pieces of the same design do not match exactly

They are painted individually, so they vary. A six piece set of one blue pottery design will be recognisably one set, and no two pieces in it will be identical twins.

This matters when you order. If you are buying a set, buy it as a set, because pieces painted in the same batch by the same hand sit together better than pieces ordered months apart. If you are replacing a broken piece from an old set, expect a close relative rather than a clone.

The vessel shapes these patterns are painted on, and what each one is for, are in our guide to Multani bartan. The current range, with the design name on each listing, is in the shop.

Frequently asked questions

What are the main blue pottery designs?

Floral and geometric. Floral work uses stylised lotus, palmette leaves, rosettes, scrolling stems and tendrils. Geometric work uses stars, lozenges, meanders and interlocking repeats, usually as borders on a vessel and as full fields on tile.

What does Full Bharai mean?

Bharai means filling. A Full Bharai piece has pattern across the whole surface with almost no plain white ground left. It costs more than lightly painted work because it takes several times as long to paint.

What are the Multani blue pottery motifs called?

Workshop design names include Full Bharai, New Kashi, Ghulab Kashi, Ghori Chain, Zangeer, Ring Blue, Ring Green, TRD, TRD Multi, Sareena, Khaadi, China Kashi, Special Kashi and Bamboo Shoot.

How can I tell a hand painted blue pottery design from a printed one?

Hand painted lines taper and vary in width, and the symmetry is close but never exact. The pattern also sits under the glaze. Perfectly repeating, perfectly even decoration sitting on top of the glaze is a transfer.

Is a Multani art design the same as a Jaipur blue pottery design?

No. Both are called blue pottery, but the Multan tradition is a cobalt and turquoise on white repertoire of floral and geometric work tied to Kashi tile design. Jaipur blue pottery is a separate Rajasthani tradition with its own motifs and a different body.

Can I order a specific blue pottery design?

Yes. Quote the design name and the shape, and ask whether that pattern is currently being painted. Not every design family is in production at the same time.

Blue Pottery Designs, Patterns and Motifs: the Workshop Names