Persian pottery
[2] Through the centuries, Persian potters have responded to the demands and changes brought by political turmoil by adopting and refining newly introduced forms and blending them into their own culture.
In the prehistoric period, the production of vessels included the mixture of clay, small pieces of various plants and straws, and water.
The Islamic prohibition on using vessels made of precious metal at the table meant that a new market for luxury ceramics opened up.
This allowed the pre-Islamic elites of the earlier Persian empires to produce fancy glazes such as lustreware and high-quality painted decoration.
An imitation of the entire state apparatus of Uruk, proto-writing, cylinder seals with Sumerian motifs, and monumental architecture, is found at Susa.
Shortly after Susa was first settled 6000 years ago, its inhabitants erected a temple on a monumental platform that rose over the flat surrounding landscape.
The exceptional nature of the site is still recognizable today in the artistry of the ceramic vessels that were placed as offerings in a thousand or more graves near the base of the temple platform.
The vessels found are eloquent testimony to the artistic and technical achievements of their makers, and they hold clues about the organization of the society that commissioned them.
The recurrence in close association of vessels of three types—a drinking goblet or beaker, a serving dish, and a small jar—implies the consumption of three types of food, apparently thought to be as necessary for life in the after world as it is in this one.
Others are course cooking-type jars and bowls with simple bands painted on them and were probably the grave goods of the sites of humbler citizens as well as adolescents and, perhaps, children.
Although a slow wheel may have been employed, the asymmetry of the vessels and the irregularity of the drawing of encircling lines and bands indicate that most of the work was done freehand.
Some of the art produced was earthenware, glass, metalwork, coins, decorative walls, and carved and painted stucco (Wilkinson, 26).
This took a new white glaze very well, and allowed thinner walls with some of the translucency of Chinese porcelain; this was already imported into Persia, and represented the main competition for local fine wares.
As in other periods and regions when overglaze enamels were used, the purpose of the technique was to expand the range of colours available to painters beyond the very limited group that could withstand the temperature required for the main firing of the body and glaze,[12] which in the case of these wares was about 950 °C.
It is known these existed, but no illustrated manuscripts or murals from the period before the Mongol conquest have survived, leaving the painting on the pottery as the best evidence of that style.
[17] Mina'i tiles found in situ by archaeologists at Konya in modern Turkey were probably made there by itinerant Persian artists.
[18] Sherds of mina'i ware have been excavated from "most urban sites in Iran and Central Asia" occupied during the period,[19] although most writers believe that nearly all production was in Kashan.
[23] Many locations of workshops have been identified, although not with certainty, in particular: Nishapur, Kubachi ware, Kerman (moulded monochromatic pieces) and Mashhad.
Often, quatrains by Persian poets, sometimes related to the destination of the piece (allusion to wine for a goblet, for example) occur in the scroll patterns.
This new destination led to wider use of Chinese and exotic iconography (elephants) and the introduction of new forms, sometimes astonishing (hookahs, octagonal plates, animal-shaped objects).
