Sunday, August 21, 2016


Under a section called “Art in America” regarding Eastern pottery in The Met Museum published in a 1909 edition of The Burlington Magazine, Garrett Pier writes:

“Among the many countries embraced under the above heading, Persia would naturally come first, since her productions, in almost every branch of decorative art, have ever been superior to those of the countries that surround her. With the single exception of the Greek, no race of ancient times has so vividly stamped the individuality of its taste upon more recent epochs than has the Persian. A genius for decorative art and a gift of colour, seemingly inherent in the race, have been fostered by a continuous national existence, for the Persian…”

Additionally, Agnes Haigh writes in the same 1909 publication that medieval Iranian ceramic art “was a native, not imported, growth and was developed from traditions of an art which, before the time of the Achaemenian dynasty [550-330 BCE], had assimilated many of the elements of the ‘Mycenaean’ art which lingered on in a modified form in the islands and coast-land of Asia Minor. The knowledge of this art was introduced into Damascus and Rhodes at the beginning of the sixteenth century, at the time of their conquest by the Ottoman Turks, whose only culture was that which they had learnt from the Persianized Seljuks.”

[pic ceramopolis @ V&A Museum UK: Kashan, Iran, 13th century… for educational purposes only]
 


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