A RARE LUSTRE AND COBALT-BLUE POTTERY TOMBSTONE

A similar Timurid tombstone dated AH 891 / 1486 AD, only six years earlier than our example, is in the Art Institute Chicago (1916.145). It is decorated with lines of loose naskh in lustre with cobalt-blue highlights. Our tile also relates to a series associated with a building commissioned by Abu Sa’id (1424-69), the great-grandson of Timur. One of these is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (30.95.26) and another in the Keir Collection (Ernst Grube, Islamic Pottery, London, 1976, pp.298-99). They are all signed by Nusrat al-Din Muhammad and dated AH 860⁄1455-56 AD. Oliver Watson talks of these inscription tiles and tombstones (some of which were made for buildings in the Kashan area and which are dated from 1418 to 1560) as evidence of the link between the Ilkhanid wares and the Safavid production of the 17th century (Oliver Watson, Persian Lustre Ware, London, 1985, p.157). He comments that the use of this costly and elaborate lustre technique for tiles in a religious and funerary context, corresponds to the function of lustre tiles in the Ilkhanid period, surmising that perhaps it was that association which preserved the technique.