Faces of the Past: Islamic ceramic

This post is inspired by our current temporary display, ‘Faces of the Past’ at Hull and East Riding Museum - exploring ideas around portraiture, identity and objects.

In this post, we’re exploring one of the objects in the case in more depth: a reconstructed dish from Iran.

The dish is large, shallow and circular, with a low foot and a wide rim.  It is highly decorated and is coloured mustard yellow, brown and cream.

It dates to the Early Medieval period (1150AD – 1200AD) and was probably made in Kashan, Iran.  It is made from stonepaste with white glaze and lustre overglaze painting.  At some point it was broken and it was repaired with plaster and repainted.

Central motif: man on horse back

As you can see from the image, the dish has been beautifully decorated on its interior surface.  The central circle is filled with a man riding a galloping horse – a lot of the image has been repainted but the horse’s head is original.  Looking at the horse rider, it is a man with long hair and an empty space around his head, which could be misinterpreted as a halo.  This space has been left empty to create a contrast between the man’s features and the background.  He’s wearing a long coat patterned with spots and a band of embroidery (known as tiraz) on its shoulder.  He’s also holding a sword in his right hand which you can just see next to the horse’s head.

Surrounding the inner circle decoration is a band with a pattern of lobed shapes, with leaves and scrolls radiating from the centre.  The rim is decorated with an animal motif of spotted dogs chasing spotted hares.

Part of the lobed band motif

This dish was produced in the main centre of manufacture of luxury ceramics during the medieval period in Iran: a place called Kashan.  The Persian word for tiles and pottery is ‘kashi’ or kashani’, showing that Kashan was so much associated with the creation of ceramics, that its products were named after the city.

Close-up of the hare motif on the rim

It’s believed that the technology for creating stonepaste and lustre wares was brought to Iran by Egyptian potters who had migrated there.  This technique involved creating the different elements of a stonepaste vessel and connecting them together with slip before they are fired.  This method encouraged potters to experiment and develop different shapes of vessels.  They could even copy metalwork or include three-dimensional figures.

This dish was studied in 2017 by the Islamic art specialist Dr Melanie Gibson, funded by the Islamic Art and Material Culture Subject Specialist Network.  Her research has provided a lot of the information in this post – we are very grateful to the Islamic SSN for arranging her visit.

Close-up of dog motif on the rim

This post is inspired by our current temporary display, ‘Faces of the Past’ at Hull and East Riding Museum.  Through this display we are inviting our visitors, both to our physical museum site and online, to explore ideas of portraiture and identity.  If you have any comments, questions, thoughts or ideas, please post them at the bottom of this post.  If you’d prefer, you can contact us using the hashtag #HERMFaces on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.