Lustreware

Categorized as Terms
With thanks to the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.

Lustreware

Mariam Rosser-Owen

Related Terms:

  • Kashan (important ceramic production center in Iran)
  • Fritware/ stonepaste (composite clay body made with quartz)

Related Khamseen Videos:

Melanie Gibson, “Ceramic Breastfeeding Figures from Iran and Syria,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 13 May 2024.

Keelan Overton, “Persian Luster Tilework between the Field and Museum,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 24 March 2022.

References:

Allan, James. “Abu’l-Qasim’s Treatise on Ceramics,” Iran 11 (1973): 111–20.

Caiger-Smith, Alan. Lustre Pottery: Technique, Tradition and Innovation in Islam and the Western World. New York: New Amsterdam, 1991.

Hallett, Jessica. “Pearl Cups like the Moon: The Abbasid Reception of Chinese Ceramics and the Belitung Shipwreck.” In Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds, edited by Regina Krahl and Alison Effeny, 75–81. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2010.

Mason, Robert. Shine like the Sun: Lustre-Painted and Associated Pottery from the Medieval Middle East. Toronto: Mazda in association with the Royal Ontario Museum, 2004.

Matin, Moujan. “The Technology of Medieval Islamic Ceramics: A Study of Two Persian Manuscripts.” In Ceramics of Iran, edited by Oliver Watson, 459–487. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.

Saba, Matthew. “Abbasid Lusterware and the Aesthetics of ʿAjab,” Muqarnas 29 (2012): 187–212.

Watson, Oliver. Persian Lustre Ware. London: Faber and Faber, 1985.

Watson, Oliver. “Revisiting Samarra: The Rise of Islamic Glazed Pottery.” In A Hundred Years of Excavations in Samarra, edited by Julia Gonnella, 123–42. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2014.

Additional Online Resources:

Excerpts from the film ‘Making Lustre Pottery with Alan Caiger-Smith‘, made by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1999):

‘Making a 9th century Iraqi lustreware bowl replica‘, potter Andrew Hazelden filmed by The British Museum, 2020.

Abbas Akbari (Iran) has several films about contemporary lustre making in Kashan on his YouTube channel and is active on Instagram.

Citation:

Mariam Rosser-Owen, “Lustreware,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 29 October 2024.

Mariam Rosser-Owen has been a curator in the Middle Eastern Section at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London, since 2002. She specializes in the arts of the Arab world, in particular the Islamic Mediterranean and North Africa. She has a D.Phil. in Islamic Art and Archaeology from the University of Oxford, and is the author of Islamic Arts from Spain (V&A, 2010). She has written widely on ivory, and her book Articulating the Ḥijāba: Cultural Patronage and Political Legitimacy in al-Andalus. The ʿĀmirid Regency c.970-1010 AD was published in Brill’s Handbook of Oriental Studies series in 2021.