Islamic potters working as early as the ninth century in the heartlands of Arabia, discovered innovations in design and production of ceramics that centuries later were adopted by their Chinese and European counterparts. It was Islamic potters that created the ‘blue-on-white’ aesthetic that came to have a long lasting influence on the production of Chinese export porcelain and later ceramic production in Europe.
Islamic craftsmen can also be credited for the innovation of the lustre technique that transformed ordinary objects of clay into shimmering works of art. As well as design, it was a series of innovations to the ceramic body that Islamic potters have the greatest legacy. In twelfth century Egypt, a newly migrated group of potters, incorporated quartz to the local clay to improve the clay body. This led to a new class of fine ceramics known as fritware that eventually became the main ceramic body of ceramics produced in the Islamic world and Europe.
This article throws light on the evolution of techniques and design of early Islamic ceramics and how during a series of migrations to new geographical locations, Islamic potters skillfully adapted ceramic techniques to new homelands.
The arrival of T’ang wares in the small port town of Basra, Iraq sparks the imagination of local potters.
Islamic ceramics production gained momentum in ninth-century Abbasid Iraq, during a period referred to as the golden age of Islamic culture, a time in which literature, philosophy, science and artistic endeavor flourished in a region that cultivated trade connections with lands as far as China. From their capital in Baghdad and later Samarra, the powerful Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) ruled over territories in North Africa, Iraq and Iran. It was in the small port town of Basra, on the Persian Gulf that local potters learnt to create beautiful ceramics, and where our story begins…
Early Basran ceramics were inspired by Chinese T’ang Dynasty (AD 618-906) wares that reached Iraq via the maritime trade routes that existed at time. Archaeological excavations carried out in the port cities of the Persian Gulf, unearthed medieval Chinese T’ang stoneware and porcelain. It is highly likely, that these imports inspired Basran potters to create their own versions as these T’ang wares were expensive to import and susceptible to damage during shipping.
Basran imitation (RHS) of a Chinese original (LHS)
© V&A Museum, London.
Chinese porcelain incorporated an important raw material, kaolin which needed a firing temperature of 1400 degrees in specialized kilns. Kaolin was unavailable in Iraq and the local clay produced a dull undesirable yellow colour on firing. By adding tin oxide to a transparent glaze, potters discovered that they could create an opaque, white surface for further painted ornamentation. This discovery established ceramics as a painterly medium and decisively changed ceramic history. Later, tin-glazed ceramic production became a feature of the ceramic arts of late medieval Spain and Renaissance Italy.
Not content with leaving the bowl unadorned as was characteristic of East Asian wares, the Islamic potter set about adorning it with motifs borrowed from the established vocabulary of Islamic design of the time. Painting simple abstract, geometric and non-figurative patterns into the glaze with cobalt blue was a local innovation which resulted in the world’s first known blue-and-white ceramics. This aesthetic would later appear in 14th century as China re-produced this aesthetic on porcelain for wholesale export.
Arabic calligraphy or designs were gracefully painted onto the raw coating of white glaze prior to firing, creating a soft delicate impression, described by Arthur Lane, a reknowned Scholar as “like ink on snow”. The stylised Arabic calligraphy bowl (above) reads:
“made by Salih” or alternatively “what was done was worthwhile”.
T’ang Treasures of the Belitung Shipwreck of a Muslim Trading Ship
The fairly recent discovery of the Belitung shipwreck a Muslim trading ship, carrying goods from China, sometime after 826 was carrying three blue-and-white wares produced from the Gongxian kilns in China that are dated to approximately 825-50AD. These blue-and-white T’ang wares were decorated in Abbasid patterns and incorporated cobalt pigment sourced from Iran. Although this discovery indicates an earlier date for Chinese blue-and-white than first acknowledged, it important to bear in mind, that these few early examples represent short-lived production in response to a one-off international order based on Abassid prototypes.
Early Lustre Pottery in the Islamic World
Lustre pigments were first applied to glass vessels by craftsmen in Egypt and by Basran potters later to ceramics, in ninth century Iraq. A complex and expensive technique, lustre painting involves applying metallic oxides lustre as a paste (usually copper and silver oxides) to tin-glazed earthenware, followed by second firing in an oxygen-reduced kiln. The resulting carbon monoxide seeks out oxygen, which it finds in the metallic compounds, chemically converting them into an iridescent film. Basran craftsmen painted simple abstract designs that included human figures as well as animal and vegetative forms (see above).
Lustre formulations and practice were highly specialized and believed to be a ‘secret’ technique confined to a guild of craftsmen. It seemed to have abruptly ceased in the tenth century, due to economic decline and re-appeared in the Fatimid Caliphate based in Cairo.
Lustrewares of Cosmopolitan Fatimid Egypt
The Fatimid caliphate (909-1171), came to rule parts of North Africa, Sicily, Egypt and Syria and established a capital in Cairo in 969. Fatimid rulers traced descent from Fatima, Prophet Muhammed’s daughter and unlike the Sunni Abbasid dynasty, the Fatimids were Ismaili Shi’a. Egypt enjoyed great prosperity at the time due to its unique geographical location allowing it to benefit from lucrative trade routes connecting it to the Mediterranean world and India. The affluent Fatimid court attracted artisans from neighboring territories and Cairo soon became the most important cultural centre of the Islamic world.
Fustat, a neighboring town became a centre of production of pottery, glass, metalwork, rock-crystal, ivory, woodcarving and textile production. Fatimid art is remarkably rich and detailed in its decoration, scenes often depict dancing and hunting. Here, artisans took inspiration from ancient forms of Greek and Roman figural representation and combined these with the non-figurative designs experimented in early Islamic art of the Umayyads and Abbasids to create a new design repertoire.
It was during the Fatimid period that lustreware ceramics attained poplarity as a decorative art. Here, figurative imagery on lustrewares conveyed a naturalistic and at times lively expression in comparison to the rigidity and abstract quality of Basra lustrewares.
Migrant potters in Egypt, now experiencing a different clay to what they were used to in Basra, set about improving the clay mixture with crushed quartz and glaze. This improved the body of the clay, lending the body of ceramic vessels an exceptional degree of versatility. This was an important step in the evolution of ceramics as fritware eventually replaced earthenware in twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the eastern Islamic world and also become the ceramic body in Spain and later Italy.
Fatimids were considered heretics by the new incoming Sunni Ayyubid dynasty, so all documents and palaces (non-religious buildings) were sadly destroyed. Fatimid lustre ceramics therefore are an important form of documentation of painting, as apart from a few exceptions, manuscripts and painting sadly do not survive from this period.
The lustre technique reached an apex in Fatimid Egypt, gradually fading out, moving onto Syria, Kashan (Iran) and at some point in time Spain. Eventually it arrived in Italy, where the lustrous glazes originally invented in Iraq became the hallmark of the famous majolica of the Italian Renaissance.
Samanid Epigrapic Slipwares
“It seems some of the most sophisticated kind of decoration was also the earliest. Their beauty is of the highest intellectual order; they hold the essence of Islam diluted.” – Arthur Lane, Scholar.
The Samanids (819-1005) were a Sunni dynasty that ruled northeast Iran and western Central Asia from their capital Bukhara. Of noble lineage, the Samanids revived older Persian artistic and literary forms.
The tenth century was the height of Persian poetry and literature; Rudaki (d. 940) was a great Samanid court poet and one of Persia’s greatest poets. The poet Firdausi (d.1020) a century later, completed the Persian national epic the Shahanameh, or “Book of Kings”. The Shahnameh tells the story of ancient Persia up to the seventh-century Arab-Islamic invasion in a series of heroic tales based on history and legend.
Paradoxically, it was in the midst of a Persian literary revival that an extraordinary group of Islamic ceramics emerged, decorated exclusively in stylised Arabic calligraphy.
A technique developed which involved dipping entire earthenware into a white, red or in some cases black liquid opaque clay called slip. Once dried this would provide a uniform background for decoration which was done with a contrasting coloured liquid opaque clay slip.
This method known as ‘slip-painted’ is unique to this region and common to a distinct group of ceramics known as Samanid epigraphic slip-wares; often creamy white slip backgrounds with dark brown or black calligraphic inscriptions applied in a graceful rhythmic fashion as can be seen in above.
Concentric black floriated Kufic calligraphy contrasts visually against stark white background. The calligraphy is interwoven, knotted and decorated with palmettes and seem to terminate in a leaf-like tendrils and reads:
“He who believes in a reward (from Allah) is generous with gifts,”
The difficulty in reading this esoteric form of Kufic calligraphy may have been the intention of the potter. Sophisticated and executed in high quality, these epigraphic wares are unmatched in their uniqueness in beauty. Arthur Lane the pioneer in the study of Islamic ceramics wrote of this distinct group:
“It seems some of the most sophisticated kind of decoration was also the earliest. Their beauty is of the highest intellectual order; they hold the essence of Islam diluted.”
In addition to calligraphy, there are slipwares decorated with multicoloured birds, animals, abstract and vegetal designs.
Medieval Ceramics of Kashan, Iran
Kashan, another town in Iran became the dominant centre for ceramic production in the Islamic world in the late twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The fritware that began conception in twelfth century Fatimid Egypt seems to have been the only type of ceramic produced in Kashan and may have arrived there possibly via Syria.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.1643)
Central Asian influences are exhibited in a range of ceramics executed in lustre and a class of ceramic termed Mina’i ware. Mina’i ware was a radical new innovation and involved the painting of coloured pigments over an earlier fired glazed body, fired for a second time at a lower temperature. “Mina’i” (enamel) a term only used for these wares means (enamelled) and is also known as haft-rang, (seven colours) in Persian. This new type of pottery developed in Kashan, Iran during the later phase of Seljuk rule in Iran.
Ceramic bowls feature slender moon-faced personages framed by long tresses of hair, almond eyes, delicate noses and small mouth – features associated with the ideals of Turkic beauty in poetry and literature of the time. Many of the painted bowls become enchanted worlds depicting scenes of romance or hunting from Persian literature and poetry.
Photo courtesy: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washingtom D.C
We are extremely fortunate to have a manuscript dated A.D 1300, that describes ceramic production. Written by Abu’l-Qasim al-Kashani a member of the well known Abu Tahir family of Kashan, the document describes in detail the materials and the process of ceramic production in Kashan. Abu’l Qasim, historian and clerk employed in the Ilkhanid Court, describes the materials and techniques necessary for making fritwares, the preparation of pigments and glazes, and the techniques of lustre. His manuscript was highly likely based on his reading of an earlier manuscipt dated to 1196, the Jawahir-nama-i-Nizami written by Muhammed al-Jawhar al-Nishapuri.
Following the end of Seljuk rule in Iran, ceramic production resumed in Kashan, after the Mongol invasions of (1221-1256) though with notable changes in style and output, under patronage of the Mongol successors, the Ilkhanids(1256-1353). The pax mongolica united much of Asia under four seats of the Mongol Empire and lead to an interesting exchange of Chinese and Islamic motifs in design. In their examination of arts of this period, art historians now consider Ilkhanid (Mongol) rule in Iran as a period in which visual arts flourished.
Below is an architectural panel made in Kashan that I admired as a teenage visitor to the former John Addis Islamic gallery at the British Museum, London. Made during Ilkhanid (Mongol) rule, the panel was commissioned for a fourteenth-century shrine complex at Natanz in central Iran and is very distinctive in terms of floral motifs and colour.
It features a verse from the Qur’an 76:9 (Surat al-‘Insan, ‘The Man’) in cobalt blue set against a carefully decorated background composed of floral decoration in luster with and turquoise.
Over the course of time the Islamic ceramic tradition took on new forms and meaning reflecting local tastes and materials. Islamic potters seem to have been a mobile group of artisans that responded and adapted to new environments well and managed to transfer their skills with relative ease. Ceramic production continued from the early phase described above and established itself in new centres of the Islamic world, Kashan in Iran, Raqqa in Syria, Islamic Spain and Ottoman Turkey.
Chinese blue-and-white painted porcelain began arriving in the Middle East in the mid-fourteenth century. This colour palette, believed to be inspired from the early Basran potters cobalt blue on a white wares came back in vogue in the Islamic world as mid-fifteenth century potters eagerly adopted this simple colour palette in their ceramics.
While this article is by no means an exhaustive survey of the length and breadth of ceramics produced by Islamic potters, of which there are many categories, it is hoped the reader can appreciate the contribution made by early Islamic potters to later ceramic production in Europe and a lesser extent China..
This article first appeared in IWA Magazine in 2015. I would like to thank the David Collection, Copenhagen for granting permission to reproduce images of the Samanid ceramics from their incredible collection of Islamic Art in Copenhagen.
Further Reading
Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery, Faber and Faber, London, 1947.
Robert Mason, Shine Like the Sun, Royal Ontario Museum, 2004.
Visit
V&A Museum, London
www.vam.ac.uk
The David Collection, Copenhagen
Secrets of the Sea: A Tang Shipwreck and Early Trade in Asia
https://asiasociety.org/new-york/exhibitions/secrets-sea-tang-shipwreck-and-early-trade-asia
British Museum