With their curvilinear floral designs and limited color palette, the intricate mosaic tilework design on these fragments may be compared to the illuminations found in contemporary fifteenth‑century manuscripts. The small selection of fragments presented here is taken from a group of more than five hundred that arrived at the Museum in 1907. While their original context has proved difficult to identify, they may once have adorned a late fifteenth‑century mausoleum in the city of Isfahan.
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Title:A Group of Mosaic Tilework Fragments
Date:last quarter 15th century
Geography:Attributed to Iran, probably Isfahan
Medium:Stonepaste; polychrome glazed tiles, set into clay
Dimensions:Tiles are currently being housed in 20 trays. Footprint of trays is approximately 94" x 37" x 24".
Classification:Ceramics-Tiles
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1907
Object Number:07.270.1–.166
Corner piece, fragmentary tile, and fragment of a panel
These three fragments were selected from the more than five hundred pieces kept in the Museum's storage rooms since 1907 and given little consideration over the years. The fragments are all composed of monochrome-glaze elements in a large variety of colors: white, turquoise, cobalt blue, aubergine, yellow, green, brown, mauve, and black. The three fragments presented here have been chosen to give an idea of the lavish decoration of the building they came from: a corner-piece, possibly from the squinches of a domed chamber; a fragmentary six-pointed star tile with a Kufic inscription in yellow repeating the name of the Prophet Muhammad; and the fragment of an inscriptional panel in white letters set on a cobalt blue background and interlaced by turquoise and brown tendrils, containing the names of the tenth and eleventh shi'ite imams, al-Naqï and Hasan (al-Zaki). These three and the remaining hundreds of fragments in storage are datable to the late fifteenth century, according to a similar mosaic panel recently reconstructed in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and to six other panels that were exhibited in New York in 1940 but whose present whereabouts are unknown [1] A proper reconstruction of the Metropolitan Museum mosaic "jigsaw puzzle" would reveal more about the nature of the decoration of the wall these fragments were once set in. However, at first glance the chromatic composition of the inscribed frieze and of its aubergine border with flowers—although not identical—seems very close to the Toronto panel. In addition, the inscription is of shi'ite content in both panels. Lisa Golombek concludes that the Toronto panel almost certainly comes from Isfahan, possibly from a mausoleum dated 1480–81 in the Darb-i Küshk quarter. In the records of the Metropolitan Museum, these fragments are reported to come from the mihrab of a mosque in Isfahan, thus supporting their original location in this town in Iran. As these fragments were purchased by the Museum in 1907, they do not belong to the same six-panel group exhibited in New York in 1940 which was removed from a mined mausoleum in old Isfahan in 1908. Consequently, they represent the earliest such fragments that came on the market at the beginning of this century.
[Carboni and Masuya 1993]
Footnotes:
1. Golombek, L., "A Tile and a Tomb: A Persian Jig-saw Puzzle," Rotunda, vol. 15, no. 2, 1982, pp. 42-49; Golombek, L. and Wilber, D. N., The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan, Princeton, 1988.
[ K.M. Jamgotchian, New York, until 1907; sold to MMA]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Hagop Kevorkian Fund Special Exhibitions Gallery. "Persian Tiles," May 4, 1993–January 2, 1994, no. 32.
Carboni, Stefano, and Tomoko Masuya. Persian Tiles. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993. no. 32, p. 37, ill. (b/w). Three fragments shown: corner piece, fragmentary tile, fragment of a panel.
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