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Lot Essay
Inscription:
Around the inside wall in kufic, possibly repetitions of benedictions in Arabic al-'izz, al-daw[la] al-'izz al-iqbal 'Glory, wealth, glory, prosperity'
Following the introduction of fritware (see lot 29), the arrival of the lustre technique – which also probably found its origins in Egypt – brought about a second revolution in Iranian ceramics. The technique required a potter to apply a thin layer of pigment, made from a mix of silver and copper oxides and earth, to the surface of a fired white-glaze vessel. The vessels would then be fired in a second time in a ‘reducing kiln’, in which carbon monoxide removed the oxygen to leave a deposit of metal. The deposit was thin enough to be practically transparent, but thick enough to have a pearlescent sheen (Oliver Watson, Persian Lustre Ware, London, 1985). In the words of Abu’l-Qasim, a descendent of the Kashani master-potter Abu’l-Tahir writing in the year AH 700/1300 AD, a finished vessel ‘reflects like red gold and shines like the light of the sun’ (translated James Allan, “Abu’l-Qasim’s Treatise on Ceramics”, Iran, XI, 1973).
The chain-like motifs between the figures on the interior, which are echoed in a larger scale on the exterior of the dish, are also encountered on other vessels, such as a bottle in the Sarikhani collection (Oliver Watson, Ceramics from Iran, London, 2020, p.223, cat.no.113) and two jugs in the Khalili collection (Ernst J. Grube, “Iranian stone-paste pottery of the Saljuq period”, in Cobalt and Lustre: the First Centuries of Islamic Pottery, London, 1994, pp.232-3, cat.nos. 260 and 262).
Around the inside wall in kufic, possibly repetitions of benedictions in Arabic al-'izz, al-daw[la] al-'izz al-iqbal 'Glory, wealth, glory, prosperity'
Following the introduction of fritware (see lot 29), the arrival of the lustre technique – which also probably found its origins in Egypt – brought about a second revolution in Iranian ceramics. The technique required a potter to apply a thin layer of pigment, made from a mix of silver and copper oxides and earth, to the surface of a fired white-glaze vessel. The vessels would then be fired in a second time in a ‘reducing kiln’, in which carbon monoxide removed the oxygen to leave a deposit of metal. The deposit was thin enough to be practically transparent, but thick enough to have a pearlescent sheen (Oliver Watson, Persian Lustre Ware, London, 1985). In the words of Abu’l-Qasim, a descendent of the Kashani master-potter Abu’l-Tahir writing in the year AH 700/1300 AD, a finished vessel ‘reflects like red gold and shines like the light of the sun’ (translated James Allan, “Abu’l-Qasim’s Treatise on Ceramics”, Iran, XI, 1973).
The chain-like motifs between the figures on the interior, which are echoed in a larger scale on the exterior of the dish, are also encountered on other vessels, such as a bottle in the Sarikhani collection (Oliver Watson, Ceramics from Iran, London, 2020, p.223, cat.no.113) and two jugs in the Khalili collection (Ernst J. Grube, “Iranian stone-paste pottery of the Saljuq period”, in Cobalt and Lustre: the First Centuries of Islamic Pottery, London, 1994, pp.232-3, cat.nos. 260 and 262).