Fragment of a Bowl

This bowl was unearthed at Nishapur in excavations carried out by the MET in the 1930s and 1940s and was acquired by the Museum through a division of finds with the Iranian government at the time. It is very thinly potted and displays a finely tapered rim. The transparent turquoise glaze appears iridescent due to decay in the soil.

This object was most probably made in the 11th or 12th century, at a time when potters were experimenting with new technologies such as stonepaste. Early stonepaste vessels were mostly monochrome-glazed, in turquoise, purple, white, blue, with the occasional splash of a different color. They were thinly-potted, such as in this example. West of Nishapur, in central Iran, vessels displayed a range of scalloped, lobed, and variably decorated rims, suggesting that the development of the medium followed slightly different paths in the two regions.