#kashan ceramic

[designobjectory]

SIX KASHAN POTTERY STAR TILES, Persia

comprising six tiles decorated with lustre over the glaze, featuring: a bear, a deer, a gazelle, a simurgh, a boar and a cockerel, some with inscriptive borders, each mounted. Glazed fritware. 13th/14th century

[designobjectory]

Ewer1200-1220, artist unknown Place Of Origin: Kashan, Iran

This striking fritware ewer was made in Kashan in Iran around 1200–1220, when this city was producing some of the most striking Islamic ceramics. The body was produced using an impressively accomplished double-shell technique. The plain inner shell – the container for the liquid – was formed, given a monochrome turquoise glaze, and fired in the normal manner. The perforated outer shell was then made around the turquoise centre and decorated in black. Parts of the decoration, including the inscriptions above and below the openwork area, were scratched through this black paint. The outer shell was then glazed in turquoise to match the inner shell, and the whole piece was fired again. The mouth of the ewer was moulded in the form of a cock’s head, and the handle as tail feathers, with details added in black. Such bird- and animal-shaped elements had been a common feature of metalwork ewers since the beginning of the Islamic period, and the double-shell technique, too, may have been inspired by metalwork with openwork decoration.