Antique Middle East Pottery
Middle East Pottery
The countries and regions that embraced early Islam were ideally located to absorb the cultural, commercial, and technical cross-currents of the early medieval world. Chinese commodities were one of the major influences in Islamic lands – an area that stretched from India to the Atlantic Ocean. Trade with China was well established by the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-906), since many Arabs were resident in Guangzhou (Canton), and in addition to spices, perfumes, and silks the Chinese sent ceramics to the Middle East.
EARLY WARES
From the 9th century, potters in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) were so inspired by Chinese wares that they strove to imitate them. The first types of ware made were buff or red earthenwares covered with a tin glaze. In an effort to simulate metals potters also developed the lustre technique, and during the next 300 years this method of decoration spread through Islamic countries, reaching Spain in the 13th or 14th century. Tin-glazed earthen-wares and lustre wares were two of the most important types of pottery bequeathed to Europe by the brilliant Islamic ceramic tradition. In eastern Persia (now Iran) the crisply contoured 10th- and 11th-century slipwares of Nishapur and Samarkand were subtly decorated with abstract leaf or geometric motifs and Kufic script.
PERSIAN WARES
Unique to the Islamic world is fritware, a glassy composition perhaps developed to copy imported Chinese porcelains produced during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). This grainy, white-bodied ware is often covered in a viscous, deep turquoise-blue glaze. Between c.1215 and 1334 plain and lustred wares were made in the town of Kashan, south of Tehran; the technique was probably introduced to Persia in the 12th century by Egyptian potters.
The sophisticated polychrome Mina’i (enamel)
wares of late-12th- or 13th-century Persia may often
seem crowded and confused, but they are nonetheless
outstanding examples of the Islamic decorator’s art.
Mina’i pottery was made in Rayy (now Rhages) near
Tehran, and is decorated with figures and painted in a wide range of colours. Many examples of early Mina’i ware are painted with large-scale figures in the manner of contemporary lustreware, but later the emphasis was
on small-scale, narrative subjects.
Later Persian wares, made during the
Safavid (1501-1732) and subsequent periods, include those from Meshed (eastern Persia), Kirman (western Persia), and Kubachi (northern Persia), most of which were painted in the style of late Ming and Transitional Chinese porcelains. The bodies, glazes, and decorations of these Persian wares Lire very similar and it is difficult to tell them apart.
IZNIK AND KOTAHYA
In the 16th century, extremely fine copies of blue-andwhite Chinese wares were made by the potters in Iznik (east of Istanbul) and Kutahya in central Anatolia. The potters in these towns created superb, crisply painted
wares with swirling and scrolling foliage, painted either in blue or in a combination of turquoise, green, and, later, a thick red (Armenian bole). In addition to conventional decorative pottery vessels and dishes, Iznik and Damascus potters produced some of the finest tileworks for mosques and secular buildings. These latter wares were highly influential in late 19th-century Europe, as seen in, for example, the work of the English designer William De Morgan (1839-1917).
KEY FACTS
Early wares
• BODY buff or red earthenware
• GLAZE tin oxide
• LUSTRE ruby, brown, yellow, black, red
• TYPES tin-glazed wares; lustre wares
• DECORATION fusion of Chinese and Islamic designs, usually abstract
Persian wares
• BODY Mina’i: coarse; Meshed, Kirman, and Kubachi: white frit paste
• GLAZE Mina’i: creamy; Meshed, Kirman, and Kubachi: thick and soft
• DECORATION Mina’i: underglaze colours and overglaze enamels; Meshed, Kirman, and Kubachi: resemble each other; black design outline may suggest a Meshed piece
Turkish wares
• BODY Iznik: greyish buff, grainy, and absorbent; Kutahya: buff and thinly potted
• GLAZE Iznik: translucent, but slightly bluish tone; Kutahya: irregular, gathers in bluish or greenish pools
• STYLES Iznik: “Golden Horn” (c.1530) decorated with knotted pencilled scrolls; “Damascus” (c.1550-70) very sumptuous, with large-scale floral subjects and saw-edged leaf (saz); “Rhodian” (c.1555-1700) mainly floral; Chinese-style blue-and-white wares
• PALETTE Iznik: wide range of colours dominated by turquoise and a scaling-wax red (Armenian bole)
• DECORATION Kutahya: crude, floral, and figural
Marks
Islamic pottery is rarely marked, although individual potters’ marks do occasionally appear; corruptions of late Ming seal marks are used on Persian pottery