- Title
- Vase
- Date Made
- second half of 17th century
- Medium
- Fritware, overglaze luster-painted
- Dimensions
- 4 3/16 x 4 3/16 in. (10.6 x 10.6 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.73.5.193
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Islamic
- Curatorial Notes
After an interval of almost three hundred years, Iranian potters of the seventeenth century revived the technique of luster glazing for use on a limited range of vessel types. This small jar was a common form of the Safavid period and may have been used as an inkpot or for sand to blot the ink. Unlike contemporaneous blue-and-white wares, whose decoration is based on Chinese prototypes, Safavid lusterware is typically decorated with lush foliage, floral blossoms, and scrolling vines, similar to the marginal illuminations of seventeenth-century manuscripts.
