- Title
- Bowl
- Date Made
- 10th century
- Medium
- Earthenware, underglaze slip-painted
- Dimensions
- 2 3/4 x 7 3/4 in. (6.99 x 19.69 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.73.5.186
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Islamic
- Curatorial Notes
In the 1930s and 1940s archaeologists from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, excavated Nishapur, a northeastern Iranian city celebrated in medieval Islamic texts as a center of trade, religious study, and poetry. The team unearthed large quantities of pottery in addition to kilns and wasters (flawed, discarded pots), indicating that Nishapur was also a major center of medieval ceramics production. In subsequent decades, many undocumented pieces, such as this bowl, were sold on the art market as "Nishapur ware." Whether these were actually made in Nishapur, however, is difficult to state with certainty, since technically and stylistically related ceramics were also excavated at Afrasiyab, in modern-day Uzbekistan.
