Egyptian Hippo Christmas Holiday Card

The hippo on this card is my interpretation of a 4,000 year old Egyptian faience hippopotamus named WIlliam, a mascot for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is a digital "painting" I did many years ago, when I was working on a book proposal for the museum. The book was never published, but this lovely little hippo lives on! I hope you enjoy it. To appreciate how clever the ancient Egyptians were, here's a brief explanation of what faience is; Faience is a glazed non-clay ceramic material or silica, composed of crushed quartz or sand, with small amounts of lime, and either natron or plant ash. Its main ingredient is quartz, obtained from sand, or crushed pebbles to which is added an alkali, a bit of lime and ground copper as colorant. The body is coated with a soda-lime-silica-glaze, most commonly a bright blue-green colour due to its use of copper. When fired, the quartz body developed its typical blue-green glassy surface. The Happy Hippo wishes you a lovely Christmas and a prosperous new year.