They would have been edged with calligraphic borders, Froom adds. These works, featuring single animals, were used particularly for the decoration of shrines and palaces. Star tiles were produced with other costly techniques, such as lustre, and sometimes combined with blue pigment. “Potters tried out different shapes, many of which were inspired by Islamic metalwork, and zoomorphic decoration abounded, reflecting longstanding traditions of bird and animal-headed ceramic and metalware vessels produced in both Persia and China,” she notes. The northern Persian city of Kashan already had a long tradition of luxury ceramic production, and it was there that many early experiments yielded spectacular results. The Hossein Afshar Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Stonepaste painted in blue and black under transparent glaze molded. “The jewel tones of the ceramics implied wealth and luxury, and the color blue symbolized divinity and divinely ordained political power under the Mongol Ilkhanid dynasty (1256-1335), as the Mongols equated their primary god with the infinite blue sky,” she adds.īase of a water pipe (qalyan), Persian, early Seventeenth Century. “From early blue and white earthenware to the proliferation of techniques, shapes and glazes made possible by the development of stonepaste, inventive Persian potters continuously expanded their repertoire, often in exchange with China, and made lavish use of the locally sourced and internationally prized blues, cobalt and turquoise, adding brilliant color to the vessels of the Persian table and tiled domes dotting the skies,” Froom writes. This innovation would fuel an unprecedented artistic, economic and cultural exchange between Persia and China after the Mongol invasions of the late Twelfth and early Thirteenth Century. Adhering to this recipe – one part fine white-colored clay and one part crushed alkaline glass frit, with ten parts crushed and sieved quartz – Persian potters had found a way to create a fired product that was close to the hard, white, translucent Chinese porcelain, and which in turn could be engraved, pierced and molded. The shape of these bowls hailed from Tang dynasty China, but the geometric shapes, abstracted plant forms and calligraphic inscriptions were distinctly Persian.īy the second half of the Eleventh Century, Froom writes, with the invention of stonepaste, Persian ceramics made significant strides toward what would become a golden age. To the stoneware bowls with flat, narrow rims, popular as early as the Abbasid period (750-1258 CE), potters in Central Islamic lands were adding white glazes and embellishing them with blue pigment sourced from Northwestern Iran. Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston.Ĭeramics made for ideal goods for trade because of their portability and durability. It would reign as a global hub of culture, religion, science, art and technology for more than 200 years before it fell to the invading armies of Alexander the Great.Īrita vase, Japanese (Edo), late Seventeenth Century. The first Persian Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great around 550 BCE, was one of the largest empires in history as it stretched from Europe’s Balkan Peninsula in the West to India’s Indus Valley in the East. The MFAH’s 2017 survey “Bestowing Beauty: Masterpieces from Persian Lands” first tapped into the Kuwaiti collector’s vast trove and is currently on view as well at the High Art Museum in Atlanta, Ga.Īimée Froom, PhD, curator of Art of the Islamic Worlds, begins the exhibit traversing the famous land and maritime routes in the Far East some 1,300 years ago. The exhibition features 74 works, many of them on loan from the extraordinary private collection of Kauwaiti resident Hossein Afshar, who has devoted much of his life to the study of the arts of Iran from antiquity to the Twentieth Century. HOUSTON, TEXAS – The city’s rich and multicultural heritage has been both an inspiration and source for remarkable interdepartmental exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in recent years, and “Between Sea and Sky: Blue and White Ceramics from Persia and Beyond” is the latest. Photograph ©The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Installation view of “Between Sea and Sky: Blue and White Ceramics from Persia and Beyond” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
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