Star- and cross-shaped luster tiles with poetic inscriptions were combined to decorate the interior walls of mosques, shrines, and palaces in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iran. In the 1860s and 70s, hundreds of tiles were removed from crumbling buildings. Many ended up in the hands of dealers and collectors who later sold or donated them to European and American museums.
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Title:Star-Shaped Tile
Date:dated 663 AH/1265 CE
Geography:Made in Iran, Kashan
Medium:Stonepaste; luster-painted on opaque white glaze
Dimensions:W. 8 1/8 in. (20.6 cm)
Classification:Ceramics-Tiles
Credit Line:Edward C. Moore Collection, Bequest of Edward C. Moore, 1891
Accession Number:91.1.105
Luster eight-pointed star tile with Qur’anic inscription
This tile belongs to another set of smaller star and cross tiles with similar vegetal and abstract designs as those from Varamin (cat. no. 10 in this volume, nos. 91.1.100 and 08.169.4) and Qur'anic inscriptions. Several of these tiles are owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This tile is dated Ramadan A.H. 663 / June A.D. 1265. From about this date on, the size of star and cross tiles was standardized to about 8 inches (20.3 cm). The inscription includes the entire first sura of the Qur'an. There is a rough sketch of a seated man on the unglazed back side—it is probably just an exercise by an artist in the workshop because the drawing is neither finished nor luster-painted.
Carboni and Masuya 1993
Tile
During the Ilkhanid period, tiles shaped like stars and crosses were combined to form large decorative panels on the interior walls of mosques, shrines, and palaces. Many of these had borders with Qur’anic and poetic inscriptions: those with quotations from the Qur’an, like this example with an excerpt from Sura 1 (Surat al-Fatiha), were intended for religious buildings, those with figural designs and poetic inscriptions for secular edifices. Like other examples of its kind, the tile is painted in copper luster on a cream-colored ground with the vegetal designs left in reserve. The inscription contains the date Ramadan A.H. 663/June A.D. 1265.
Although most likely produced in Kashan, a thriving center of ceramic production, the tile is closely related to a large group, ranging in date from A.H. 661 to A.H. 663/A.D. 1262–64, from the mausoleum of Imamzadeh Yahya in Varamin, 150 of which are today in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.[1] These were probably removed from the building in 1862–63 and 1875. Two Frenchmen, Jean Baptiste Nicolas and Jules Richard, later sold them to Sir Robert Murdoch Smith, a diplomat and director of the Persian Telegraph Department in Tehran, who in turn purchased them for that museum.[2] One tile in the group is almost identical in design and palette to the Museum’s example.[3]
Furthermore, similar tiles from a mihrab of 1264 signed by the famous Kashan potter ‘Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Tahir and a tile in the Metropolitan dated A.H. 661/A.D. 1262–63 have also been linked to the mausoleum at Varamin.[4] It is noteworthy that Kashan potters produced tiles for buildings and mosques of several Iranian cities aside from Varamin, including Qum and Mashhad.[5] The presentation of Ilkhanid luster tiles at world’s fairs and the publication of Smith’s 1876 catalogue led to their wide circulation on the art market.[6] Many were sold to European collectors and dealers after the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1889, eventually making their way into museum collections in Europe and the United States.
Maryam Ekhtiar in [Higgins Harvey 2021]
Footnotes:
1. Masuya, Tomoko. "Persian Tiles on European Walls: Collecting Ilkhanid Tiles in Nineteenth-Century Europe." Ars Orientalis 30 (2000), pp. 39–54.
2. Ibid., p. 43.
3. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O89590/tilepanel- ali-ibn-muhammad/; see also Maryam D. Ekhtiar in Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Najat Haidar, eds. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, p. 118.
4. The Metropolitan’s tile is MMA 91.1.100, also from the Moore Collection.
5. Masuya 2000, (see note 1) p. 45.
6. Smith, R. Murdoch. Persian Art. 2nd edition. South Kensington Museum Art Handbooks. London: Published for the Committee of Council on Education by Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Inscription: In Arabic around border; the inscription includes the entire first sura of the Qur'an
Edward C. Moore (American), New York (until d. 1891; bequeathed to MMA)
New York. Hagop Kevorkian Fund Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Tiles," May 4, 1993–January 2, 1994, no. 11.
Schimmel, Annemarie. "Islamic Calligraphy." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., vol. 50, no. 1 (Summer 1992). pp. 28, 30, ill. fig. 36a (color).
Carboni, Stefano, and Tomoko Masuya. Persian Tiles. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993. no. 11, p. 16, ill. (b/w).
Beyazit, Deniz, Maryam Ekhtiar, and Sheila R. Canby. Collecting Inspiration : Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co., edited by Medill Higgins Harvey. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021. no. 125, pp. 192–93, ill.
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