 Good evening and welcome to Russia again on this old night. Thank you for coming. I'm very happy to have Dr. Richard Piran McClary with me talking from York. And Richard is a senior lecturer in Islamic Arts and Architecture University of York. And he received his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2015. He has lectured extensively on a range of subjects related to medieval Islamic art and architecture around the world, and also he is very well known to Russia audiences, because he has already given a seminar for us in 2018, in which he was discussing the work in progress of what then has become an article, which is impressed the moment, and it's about the mineral escape of Anatolia and Turkey. And Richard has held the Liverpool Trust Early Career Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh from 2015 and 2018. I'm coming in the surviving purpose of Kara Hanida architecture in Central Asia. And he is a very prolific writer, his first monograph entitled room, Seljuk architecture 1170 to 1220. The patronage of Sultans was published by University, Edinburgh University Press in 2017. And his second monograph, medieval monuments of Central Asia, Kara Hanida architecture of the 11th and 14th centuries, also with the UP, was published recently in 2020. Richard has also recently published an article on geometric interlace, a study of the rise full meaning of stereotomic strap work in the architecture of room Seljuk Anatolia in Anatolian studies, 2022, which obviously contributes to the current wider debate on ornament in Islamic art. And today, Richard will talk to us on a new exciting work in progress that will be published in the journal of material culture of the Muslim world. And the title of this seminar is rare and complex wears a study of vessels and shirts decorated with both mean IE and luster techniques. I remind the audience to write their comments or questions in the chat, and I will read them aloud at the end of the seminar. Thank you very much Richard for being with us tonight and over to you. Well, thank you so much for that and thank you everyone for joining. And I'm aware my mic isn't of the highest quality so I will try and shout it a bit louder but do let me know if you can't hear properly. I'm going to introduce a little known corpus a very distinctive type of wears combining two overglave techniques and present a few previously unpublished examples, alongside some better known pieces and I'm going to do my usual attempt to try and make bits of broken pots interesting but you will have to be the judges of whether I'm successful in that mission or not. Before I start I just want to introduce three of the styles of me know you that I've identified and which are pertinent to today's discussion. A brief summary was published in McCartness a couple of years ago, and the full study will be included in my forthcoming monograph on the night currently impressed and due out at some point in the middle of next year. On the top left to have style one, which is the most common always on white and usually featuring a blue kufik inscription band on the rim and light green details outlined in black. The style to on the right has rather more sparse decoration figural and roomy motifs and a blue band with the inscription left in white reserve. The third style seven features gold kufik outlined in red, often but not always on a blue band, and an additional decorative elements in gold with red outline in many cases as well. So with that out of the way, I will start to address the main topic of today's talk. The two most prestigious and technically challenging ceramic decorative techniques used in the Islamic world in the 12th and 13th centuries were arguably manai and luster. Manai, also called haft rang or seven colors was in use in Iran and seemingly primarily in the region of Kashan and central Iran in the latter part of the 12th and the first few decades of the 13th century. They were a mix of in glaze and overglaze applications of enamel pigments made of ground glass with metal oxides providing the color. The result is brightly colored miniature decoration that is largely the girl with a level of detail and polychromy not seen in other types of medieval ceramic where luster is a process that creates a metallic sheen on the surface of the vessel, which can be either painted with enamel or cover large areas and have the pattern scratched in to reveal the white place beneath and this latter approach allowed for finer detail than was generally possible with painted luster. By far the rarest type of medieval Iranian fine glazed ceramic where the pieces that feature both of these types of overglazed decoration on the same vessel. So the pieces that combine both techniques as style nine of my new taxonomic framework. The rationale for medieval potters in Iran having attempted to produce such wares is clear. The successful combination of the bright crisp colors and miniature detail possible with manai, and the flashing reflective metallic sheen of luster would have resulted in a dazzling tour de force of the potters are on a single vessel or tile. The fragments survived lying the extreme technical challenges created in the attempt to combine these two different techniques. Each one alone is fought with risk, and many pieces of minai were of overfired colors which turned lottery or run. There's an inherent kill risk of parts of the kiln being hotter than others, causing the luster to adhere to the glaze in an irregular manner. So having a different color inside and outside is common with the luster of style nine where and it's difficult to match the temperature requirements for these two techniques. It was clearly an extremely challenging combination to execute successfully. And if the temperature in the reducing kiln was not hot enough, the luster would not want to be glazed. The problems of authenticity with most seemingly complete manai ware vessels are well documented. And for that reason sherds and ball bases are studied alongside some seemingly complete, but generally restored pieces. While incomplete sherds have generally not been altered, although there are the odd exceptions, and are much more reliable as evidence for establishing both the nature of the production process and the main design principles. The quality of the corpus of wares that combine both techniques has identified two main variants. Style nine a is the more detailed one generally the combination of painted and scratched luster, refined and large scale over glazed painted figural decoration, usually on coveto bowls. These are commonly seen on coronated or angular sided bowls featuring smaller and more crudely executed figures and a far less refined method of applying the luster with a muddy appearance and no scratch designs. And the two types may have been produced for different sectors of the market, with one most likely haven't been more expensive than the other. These all appear to be on a white place although a lot of menai ware is on turquoise. All of these style nine wares are on a white place glaze. Very little has been written specifically on this group of wares that feature both techniques. Arthur Up and Pope addressed two examples briefly in his and Phyllis Ackerman's a survey of Persian art focusing primarily on a partial tile in Boston that we'll see shortly. It was designed by Al-Mukri that was then in the possession of Franklin Mott Gunther, but is now unknown for its location, and it was not until Oliver Watson's landmark book on Persian luster where that additional examples were addressed specifically with regard to the combination of the two techniques. The small corpus of 22 pieces spread across several major collections of Islamic art around the world consists of a mix of fragments and repaired vessels. The luster decoration on these wares appears to be subordinate to the menai and was mainly used for its surface effect with the menai used for the intricate miniature polychrome detail. And the luster tends to dominate the exterior. Well, again, with all these medieval things, there's more exceptions and rules. And the foot the interior is generally the focus of the two different techniques. The majority of pieces of this style nine a the lustres can combine with a distinctive cursive NASC script in light green delineated in black. In addition, several elements associated with the star one that we saw earlier, including in glaze blue arabesque patterns blue kufik and the associated light green elements delineated with over glazed black can be seen. There are four of these bowls. One of them in the Sarah Carney collection. The others in the good collection and the one in the Louvre will see as well. There's a luster painted bird inside the foot of this and similar luster painted birds are seen in the foot of several other vessels as well as this type. They seem to have been applied both as a layer over the surface into which patterns were scratched, as well as being carefully applied to apply the general generally vegetable pattern with the background being white and you can see that better on the exterior here. There are only two examples of Stein nine wears with any figure on luster decoration and this is definitely one of them up from the small bird. Well virtually no luster remains on the interior there are large areas on the outside. And it is. It has had extensive restoration as you can see if you look at the upper image of the inscription band, but the significant portion of it is original and it has an exceptionally well drawn horse and rider. The blue in glaze has overfired slightly on the inside and the dark brown luster painted bird is the one we can just see here on the left and the text that's been translated by Watson is just given up there. It's a cursive inscription as a Persian quatrain and an Arabic couplet added on and the arctic signature. The luster in the background of the inscription is painted and unlike some of the other examples there's no luster, there's no white reserve around the letters and others will see what I mean when we come to that shortly, but it's very similar both these muckwheat bowls are very similar in technique. If we look at them next to each other. This is the other one the one that published in 1936 and assuming that at least some of the color on the body of the horse in the clothes of the rider is original, which is often a risky assumption to be fair. The bull does appear to be in a slightly more finished state than the Sarah honey piece. Unfortunately, it's impossible to determine just how much if any luster survived on the outside, due to the low resolution of this 1936 image of the pope supply. A very significant style nine a bowl base and rim section currently embedded within the matrix of plaster fill and modern fired shirts to form a seemingly compete vessel is this one here in the Louvre in Paris. It was 67 millimeters high and was originally about 220 millimeters wide purchased from Jean Soustiel in 1970. There are approximately 13 original sherds glued back together, and the newly fired sections have glaze on the top that is rounded at the edges, rather than broken as is found on true original shirts. They're not crazed in the same way, and the luster has a different range of colors. This shows the original sherds with the modern material digitally removed as if by magic for clarity. Alongside the main central horse and rider in minoy, the cursive cover and rim inscription bands, there are multiple surviving areas of luster decoration, and a variety of different tones. In a variety of examples the bowl in its original state had a wide flat rim of the same plane as the base with a very shallow covetous it's close almost to a plate really than a ball. The outside section of the flat room has Ruby red luster flashing on the narrow band above the inscription and darker red luster on the small lobes on the edge itself this is on the left hand image. And below these are intricate areas of scratched and painted luster infill. The base colorant is bled out due to overfiring on the inscription of the rim and the textile of the rider with the blue fabric in slight relief. The blue inscription band has a matte finish but there are some traces of gold that appear to have burned, and these remain within the original confines of the letterforms with the blue presumably having spread out during one of the kiln firing. The surviving portion of the cursive Persian inscription band in the caveto of the bowl in light green with a thin black outline is delineated in the same manner as that on several other sherds of nine style nine a wears and partial bowls. And this use of this light green with the black outline is one of the general characteristics, commonly seen on style one and on a significant number but by no means all of the style nine a wears that have been identified. Fortunately the Persian inscription has still alluded any meaningful translation. The main decoration, I can just go back and have a look at it features a figure on horseback, and the horse is extremely well delineated as is the case with several of the other bowls in this room. The inscription on the exterior was in luster, with no evidence of minai, and it's not entirely clear what the nature of that decoration was it may well have never bonded particularly well but it certainly isn't clear to see now. Despite the fragmentary nature of the piece it's clear this was an unusually shaped vessel, and despite the loss of control of the blue the piece was considered valuable enough to add luster decoration in a variety of different compositions in order to give a multiplicity of color tones. The difference was also recognized in the modern era, when a great deal of effort was put into creating newly fired sections to complete the appearance of the vessel. Now while the majority of the corpus is now outside of Iran, there's a shirt in the National Museum of Iran and Tehran with a section of a standard style one inscription band with a portion of the green leaf with black outline. In addition there is finally executed luster decoration, this is on the left here, both sides of the shirt. It has a redder outline, and then a more golden color used to fill in the delineated areas. The quality of the luster and the crispness of the minai show that the original piece was very successfully fired. And here on the right you can see again the cursive green inscription with a black outline, as is seen on the mockery bowls. However, while fragmentary the luster on the shirt is much better preserved than on any of the bowls. The exterior features blue lines in an area of turquoise with fine black outline in the manner of style one. The shirt is a piece of a bowl that successfully combined the two techniques on both the interior and exterior, making it a particularly important piece. The whole area of white background is left around each group of the connected cursive letters, and then dense luster decoration is painted in the remaining space. Another couple of shirts in Tehran, a small fragment similar inscription but definitely from a different, different vessel is it lacks the reserve left around the letter. And clearly a degree of diversity across the copper small though it is, and there appears to have been what looks like a kufik inscription in luster. That's just the image on the left there, just above the little fragment of the green Nash fragment. So I mean we're dealing with very very small pieces here I mean you can see from the size of about two centimeters. One hand and then two by just over one simply square on the other. But when when you're dealing with something this uncommon one has to take whatever will come find. Now, these three shirts in Tehran taken together retain a far greater amount of luster than the majority of seemingly complete bowls. And there's no evidence of loss of control of the in glaze blue that is visible on other shirts that we'll see. And these will show that the combination of the two technically challenging surface treatments was perhaps more successfully executed than the corpus of respect restored bowls with faint partial or mostly missing luster and blotchy in glaze blue might suggest. And the better state of preservation also allows for some observations concerning the process of production. It can be seen that the black over glazed lines were added over the top of the luster and were fixed in the final firing of the vessel. Given the need to fire the base glaze, then the luster, it is clear that these pieces had to be fired at least three times. Another shirt this time in the museum for Islam is your constant Berlin is from the rim of a bowl and also features the light green decoration with black delineation on the inside on the right. On the interior you see the standard star one inscription band but with luster instead of green. There's a green bird in black with a much glossier finish that the surface is much better preserved on the exterior than the interior for whatever reason. And the luster also covers the rim as you can see here you've got this scratched decoration with the bird added. This is particularly impressive style nine a ball base in Kuwait in El Saba collection with extensive surviving luster and a NASK inscription. The cursive green with black outline consists of a Persian quatrain, and it reads, the nightingale of my heart is lost in the rose garden of your face. The compass of the constellation broke because of your face. I survived, but you did not bother to hunt my heart. But you hunt hearts by just the glimpse of your face. Blessing. There are a couple of varied readings but that gives the sense of the tone of what we're talking about on these bowls. Only the bottom sections of the cover to survive but enough remains to see that the interior featured a series of nine blue outlined roundels, each containing a combination of in glaze blue and thin lines of luster decoration. Whereas in contrast, the exterior has large areas of much darker luster and traces of roundels in blue. There are two colors of luster used in the interior, a browner one for much of the decoration and a redder one applied much more finely around the cursive light green inscription in the form of fine vegetal tendrils. The bowl base features five different luster techniques in total. There are two in combination, namely the fine tendrils with red luster, and then the golden brown luster painted around them as background. The same light brown is painted in four sections, and in the form of split parmets. Also on the underside of the dark brown luster bowl, luster bird, and finally an inscription scratched in which has some flashing. In Saracanee and Saracanee on the bowl, Paris and even the Tehran ones, the curate bowl base here has a line in a different mix of luster painted in to create the white reserve around each word. So again, you see each time you look at some of these pieces, you see slightly different techniques being used, there's no uniformity. Some of the types of decoration that are applied in luster on style 999A wears can also be found on vessels that are entirely luster decorated. And one example is this fragmentary and unrestored bowl section currently in Los Angeles. It has the same sort of vegetal design birds and scratch decoration as we see on style 999A wears demonstrates the shared vocabulary of ornament, but the crispness of detail that is possible when only luster is being applied. And no additional overgaze firing is required highlights the problems that the potter sometimes experienced when trying to combine these two very different techniques on the same vessel. And if we look at this shirt in the in the free area in Washington, it has a number of details suggest that it was also part of what would be classed the style 998 bowl has scratched luster and a wide color palette. The layer of luster applied around the Minnai bird is thinner than on the other panel of the luster on the left. While the form is a little lighter it seems that have been made maybe too much applied on the left side as it has spread out and caused this light pink staining of the white sections revealed by the process of scratching the luster layer prior to firing. And this is an example of something called red flashing caused by the copper becoming slightly volatile and staining the glaze around the design. In addition to the blue in glaze color and use for the lines for the basic design. There's a significant number of colors used on this one small shirt. You see this gray for the head, black for the outline, along with brown for the beak and other parts of the neck, then pink for the main body, red for the feet and finally green accents on the body and the wing tip. And this is a far greater range of colors than seen on most pieces of Minnai where it is indicative of this shirt having been part of a very high quality piece. If we turn to this de restored fragmentary Covetto bowl in the National Museum of Iran in Tehran, it appears at first glance to be a style one bowl, lacking the red that one might expect to see. We have on close examination there are very faint traces of scratch luster decoration and that's what we see just vaguely here in this area if you can see the cursor and the background of part of the inscription band. And although invisible only visible on a small area, it's enough evidence to suggest that this also might be considered an example of a style nine eight bowl. The way the figures are delineated is very similar, and it's a particular importance as it bears a date so if indeed it is an example of style nine eight is the only piece of style nine a style nine where that is dated dated show all six or four which is April 1208. Well, much of the material I'm presenting here has been written up and will be published soon. Last month I was in Tokyo on a research trip and much to my delight. I got very excited when I came across this at the in looking through stuff in it amidst collection in Tokyo. It has extensive. And I mean, I mean even by the standards of many extensive fill and over paint, but like the Louvre and Tehran balls it does retain luster on the lower exterior, as well as on some of the shirts inserted into the room. These traces of luster have been noted once in a recent publication in Japanese but not to my knowledge in any publications outside of Japan. So I'm hoping to be able to do a more detailed study of this piece. If we look on the inside the bleeding of the blue has occurred as it's quite standard and traces of a luster design can be seen and just highlighted here. There's an inscription band painted lightly in luster, and there's also the scratched decoration behind the inscription band, the blue inscription band above it. On both side the the style nine pieces that share characteristics with the style one. There are three more pieces that don't have those characteristics but still seem to fit into this broad category that I've put together. And one of the most impressive and well preserved is in the music the blog and Leon is a Kaveta Kaveta ball on a high foot with a central horse and rider in the middle, albeit a little smaller than the ones of the two McCree balls and the one in the Louvre. There's a blue kufik inscription bound around the rim and very well executed very highly detailed luster decoration. It has been repaired, but as you can see where those repairs are they haven't overpainted the areas that were missing, but the majority of the decoration appears to be original. And the luster roundels alternate with simple roomy or arabesque patterns in the Kaveta. And there are also eight inverted triangles each with a small pendant, based at the base of the inscription band you can see here on the left so he's on the inside. These rounds are unique in the corpus of style nine a wears but then when it's such a small corpus almost everything's unique to be fair to read too much into that. They have stippling on the clothing and are surrounded by simple arabesque patterns. But unlike the majority of style nine a wears this ball doesn't have any of the scratched swirling lines through the luster indicative of Watson's cash and style and attributed to after 1200. There are a number of luster sweet meat dishes including this one in the Harvard Art Museum that have very similar seated figures with stippled dress surrounded by split palmets set in roundels. It also has similar if slightly simpler triangle shapes with a circle at the lower tip, as can also be seen in the bowl in Leon. The presence of figures and the lack of the incised luster decoration, seen on the majority of other of other style nine a wears demonstrates the difficulty in piecing together a clear picture of the scope and diversity of joint manai and luster decorated wears from such a small sort of shirts and repaired bowls. Now, here we've got the only tile in the corpus of style nine is in the Museum of Fine Art in Boston this was, along with the now lost mercury bowl was one of the earliest pieces of style nine a wear to be published it was published by Pope. Just over half of the tile survives with three and a half of the original eight points intact. One of the most pieces of menai wear with an identifiable scene from the shop now made the Persian Book of Kings by Ferdowsi. But this is the only example that also has a curse of inscription that describes what is being depicted. The text reads rough tiny irani as Desi for who told the Iranians leaving for the fortress. This of the tiles packed with figures, and there's not a lot of background, but where there is, with the exception of the curse of inscription is covered with very finely painted and scratched luster. The beards of the two main figures are depicted in a very distinctive and sophisticated manner, and the luster decoration is also very well executed and successfully fired. It's long been assumed that both menai and luster wear were luxurious wears that would make the examples that combined both techniques, especially desirable. And while not as luxurious as textiles or precious metals, the multiple firings and in some case the use of gold does indicate that style nine a manai wears was something of a luxury. However, the level of luxury that such wears represent remains unclear. There are really examples being produced at two levels of quality, as the star nine bewares that we've come to soon are more quotidian in nature. And in relation to luxury ceramics more broadly Watson notes that such wears are fragile with no intrinsic value and made with relatively cheap raw materials. Essentially worthless when broken yet still large numbers were sold and traded in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, and their existence is indicative of a large body of customers with the surplus cash to acquire such non essential items. The vessel might not be particularly expensive and I don't think should be contributed to being courtly. But if you're going to cover a wall with large number of these sort of tiles that does suggest a whole other level of wealth and prosperity. Well nine will come through these fairly quickly as sophisticated luster both painted and scratched as this jug in the freer. It's got a illegible inscription due to the extensive restoration and comparable palette to some style one, but as with almost all seemingly pieces of midnight where this is a problematic object that really needs x-rayed and possibly taken apart to really clearly establish what aspects were original and what date to the modern era. An unusual and very well executed ball bases in the Kear collection that we see here. No link told to what are called style one. But has considerable amounts of gold and red outline in the manner of some of the style seven ways that I showed what one example of and in particular these, this is a front designs gold red outline. We've got a small shirt in the Louvre discussed below. This is one of the only ones that has their elements of style several. But with such a small corpus is impossible to determine the true scope of the production of style nine ways. But as the examples discussed here show, while general trends can be observed, the level of diversity within such a small piece suggests that a great deal of information remains buried in the ground and a fuller picture will only emerge slowly over time as more material is excavated and published. And may indeed involve some the archaeology of archives and seeing that stuff that may well have been excavated but is just sitting in boxes in the basement of museums. The figure to the right of the central tree is a replacement, but the faint luster decoration which is both painted and scratched all over the white background areas appears to be unaltered. While the interior of the bowl has extensive overglazed decoration, the exterior is far less decorative. You can see that it's just fairly plain decoration, very similar indeed to a large and recently conserved luster bowl in the Ashmolean. Most of the surface features overglazed mini decoration on the inside, but we do have this finely scratched decoration. There's also this small shirt in the Louvre that has another example of style seven this time not on a blue band, but it has the same square angular kufik in gold with the white background and red outline. Very small this doesn't give us a great deal of information about the production process. There are three small dots of blue in glaze colorant on the left you can see them, and the red lines have been applied after the luster was fired. The areas of gold were then applied over the red which is bled into some areas, and the luster is well fired, and this is along with the one in the key are the only style seven type decoration. Again, no trace of menai on the outside but given the size of it that's not definitive but it does seem like it's a generally all over luster design has molded hexagons each outlined in brown luster. And although any parts of two hexagons survive, they have a different painted pattern inside each one. There's also no evidence of any scratched luster. There are clear links between the decoration on some examples of luster where with figural decoration and that found on numerous pieces of menai wear, as this miniature style luster ball based shows. You have the same sort of figures horses branch with dot motif, and even kufik inscription banned with the lettering in reserve, this is quite an unusual example of that, as seen on style to menai wears. The similarities suggest that at least some of the time the same painters are working with both luster and menai. However, in the case where both techniques were used on the same vessel. The luster is generally used solely as background decoration with the polycrime overglaze pigments used for the main decoration. Now don't worry this next bit isn't anything like as long as the first. The defining characteristic of the second group style be our smaller scale, more crudely executed figures, alongside the style one motif, we have thicker less decorative and seemingly more poorly fired luster decoration. The small rapidly painted menai figures and single lines of luster seem to be applied with a fairly wide brush. The surface effect, it's not a refined or detailed decoration and was applied in a similar width and level of detail as the enclosing lines of English blue. There are three known, three known examples of bold bases of this type as luster applied in the areas around the figures, this one here in Q8 we see another one in Paris. There are two seemingly compete bowls that have very similar decoration as well and all four pieces, as with most of the nine a broadly sharing characteristics with the most common menai style. The Saracani collection has this bowl here, sits on a large tall straight foot ring, and while it has been extensively reconstructed with areas of thrust to fill on the rim. And you can see much of the original areas the luster has either burned off or never fully adhered, but enough retains remains to determine that is fairly crude with none of the delicacy and quality of execution seen in the earlier today, not earlier production sequencing is not something we have any data for. This general trend can be seen across the wider corpus with more luxurious and well executed large scale figural decoration generally being on the Carvetto curved walls and then the somewhat less sophisticated on the ones with the angular sides as you see here. Luster replaces the green with black outline and red dots seen in the style one inscription bands with the same basic blue, blue text, and none of the surviving examples of this second less sophisticated group features scratched inscriptions or a scratch declaration so this base similar style this is in the Louvre you can see two views of the side of the base and then the actual decoration from above. Single horse and rider again fairly standard iconography yet to be interpreted meaningfully although many have tried, but the difference in scale and quality demonstrates the wide range of types of ways that were being produced using the same technical processes. We have this one we just saw that's the one in Kuwait, three figures in rounds all and blue has very seriously degraded probably in burial so although it looks great probably did look a lot more blue when it was produced. This is the only seemingly one of the only other seemingly complete bowl in the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, very extensive amounts of restoration but again, despite the areas of feeling overpainted does consist of a lot of genuine fragments put back together. follows the same sort of pattern, the Koofy inscription band is unusually lower and turquoise rather than at the top of the rim it's at the base of the bowl but still fits into the same broad pattern. There are a number of different ways of depicting faces and but slightly more sophisticated use of luster but as you can see it's certainly not on the level of something like the one that's in the care collection with the very fine detailed scratching and infilling. And if we take a look at the back of it. Again, you can see the the section is my mouse. This section here is all plaster filled with modern overpaid but if we focus on the bit more on the left, you can see very finely applied red design and then a more brown pigment used to create the decoration itself. Here you can see there's a mix of water doesn't look like the red goes over the top of the brown so the sequencing isn't totally clear needs closer study I did go and look at it earlier this year but what can always look more closely at these things the many secrets to be revealed. But it's certainly a two stage process. And at the end is an additional ball base in the freer haven't been able to see this one and it isn't the best photographs apologies and it doesn't look like it might actually have a small scratched area so as soon as we come up with a rule we can usually find something that breaks that rule but nevertheless general trends can be observed. And finally, in terms of the style be we have this piece in the Louvre small piece that has a little arm band to raise band but here it's painted in luster rather than being done in gold leaf which is the more common approach. This is it sort of fits in between you could put this in either category but the sketchy design, the smaller figure, and the sort of more yellow tone to the luster suggest that should probably if it has to be cast as one or the other be in the nine B category. But again, these are not fixed rigid rules it's just the starting point to try and understand this corpus of material. One last piece we're going to look at is these pieces that might look to initially to be examples of style nine where but are in fact modern confections produced with commercial market. This one here in the Walters Art Museum has style to decoration, this particular band here is very, very common. And if we look closely there isn't actually a single point where the area with the luster actually interacts with the luster sections with Minai. This is mostly overpaint over here, but you can also see the level of crazing that is seen on the Minai section isn't replicated on the luster section there's no crazing on that so what we have is the upper part of a different vessel, put on to that didn't maybe have an upper section or lost it or was too damaged in order to create something more appealing. And indeed, Walter's Henry Walters was warned that many such pieces in the market by different collection were very questionable. And I can get so many good pieces cheap but you can't, you're buying duds and subsequently a lot of the waters Minai has been shown to be very problematic with questionable levels of authenticity. We see these clear break lines between the two sections. And so an interesting piece that has a story to tell, but not one that we should include in this category. Despite the small corpus of only 22 pieces, there's enough evidence to show there's a wide variety of types being produced, especially of the more refined style a 998. And this degree of diversity in the small corpus demonstrates the innovation and lack of standardization on the part of the artisans in the still barely understood production context of these ways. And it's likely is that at least some of these pieces would have been fired at least three times, rather than the presumed two firings that are indicated by Apple Carson. And the complex and unique nature of this material poses questions about the production process. While evidence is lacking the fact that the great majority feature style one declaration alongside luster suggests that for a brief period one, possibly dominant production facility combined these two most challenging of over glazing techniques successfully. And while these two broad styles can be determined as a great degree of diversity within them, especially in the case of the former. Despite the small size of the corpus their existence is testament to the culture of collaboration experimentation and innovation on the part of the artisans responsible for that production, working at a range of registers of quality. Despite the clear technical problems inherent in combining the two techniques, there were numerous pieces produced and a variety of different ways. The skilled artisans continue to attempt to marry together the intricate polychrome decoration of over glazed decoration and the metal oxides that shine like the sun on the same glazed stone paced surface. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for this very interesting insight into these complex pieces and for bringing them together, not an easy task given that they are scattered around so many, so many collections around the world, yes. So, audience, please write your comments and questions in the chat. In the meanwhile, I wanted to ask you, I mean, I was, I mean, you, you talked about it towards the end about the complexity of the techniques used and you talked about different firings. And we know, you know, the technical challenges of luster paint and those of mean IE. So, to what extent has the technical aspects of combining the two have been studied. I mean, has it been reconstructed have, have potters, you know, contemporary potters try to, to make such where, you know, in the same way that luster where has been made. Also in modern times, or, for example, the reconstruction of the enameline and gilding on glass has been done in modern times. So I just wanted to know whether you know something. In terms of has anyone made recently something that combines the two not that I know of a Bassak Bari would be the best person to speak to about that. I haven't had a chance to see him recently. I took to him earlier this year, but I haven't asked him about that. But it'd be interesting to get his insight, but not that I know of. In terms of the study of them. There's an ongoing project that Oliver Watson's doing with the Sarah Carney collection beyond the big book that he published, I think maybe two year or two now. There's a lot of article with some testing of them, but I don't think off the top of my head I don't think one of the luster and many ones are included in that but I think eventually they will I think there is a plan to test all of those and then try and understand what's going on with them. I don't know how much that will reveal other than, yes it's luster and yes it's, you know, combined. It's interesting to see what does come from that and also to see the x-rays to see just how much is later. But in terms of how challenging it is and how to do it, it would be good to see someone try and do it and I know there are people other than about David, he's the one I know who is doing the, certainly the best quality, you know, authentic reproductions of sort of ill-carned and late Seljuk or post Seljuk ceramics with overblades. Thank you very much. Any question in the chat? Not yet. So maybe I'll ask another question. Another question that came to mind to me it was it's more of a perhaps a methodological questions. I mean, you group this material into groups, which obviously facilitates the study in a way. But I'm wondering whether these are very helpful categories, whether there is overlap, whether you find it that they actually don't quite help. Well, yeah, they're a first step. They're certainly not the end result, the means to try and make sense of it. And otherwise completely undifferentiated amorphous mass of generally Minai wares. So it by by creating, albeit certainly arbitrary on one level categories, as long as one maintains that awareness that it's a means to an end of better understanding and not an end in itself. I found it has been useful because just by identifying what the most common styles are what's done the most. And what is used only on white, which ones you do sometimes see on white and turquoise and being able to see that with these ones that combine luster. They're generally using characteristics that are seen in one of the most common styles that he's only used on whitewares so it creates a way to start working through the material. I certainly don't think it's, it's, you know, the end, the end of the road or you know that certainly that you know right now we understand Minai. It's just in the absence of anything I needed to create something. It is methodologically it's essentially a 19th century approach. I mean it's the least contemporary approach you could find, but that's only because most other categorizations were done in the 19th century. So you see nobody judges that it's just you use them and refine them and work on it and improve it and move beyond that. But yeah I thought I couldn't think of a better way to get a way to make sense of what is a vast corpus. I mean there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of vessels of varying degrees of quality and authenticity and thousands and thousands of shirts. So I'm just in the process of cataloging. We've found 800, a colleague I'm working in Tehran, 800 Minai shirts that have never been accessioned or cataloged. So, you know, it's worked as a scientific way to test this categorization this taxonomy is that of those 800 there's probably only 20 or 30 that really don't fit anywhere, unless they're just such tidy shirts that you know you could never identify what they were. Yeah, it has been useful but I wouldn't say it's the end of the road. And I see there was a question about them. Thank you very much. I'm going to read it out. So folks your heart says, can you talk a bit more about the al-mukri peace pieces. Do you think they are unfinished. Thank you. That's a very good question. I don't know. I don't really know. I think they probably were closer to finished than we think they were and not the losses were through not being fired correctly, you know that they were finished. They were fired and there were losses because some of them do have overglow and I want the one that we still have it has overglades. So, you know, you wouldn't add that black fine line as a next phase, if the first bit hadn't been deemed worth taking to market. So, in terms of practicality and sort of expediency it seems like what our idea of finished is is maybe different from what there's was I mean we see things like some of the luster tiles luster mitrabs that are very heavily distorted and damaged and might be considered seconds but we're still installed and treated as finished so you know they maybe weren't as critical, or we're just aware of costs so whether it was a cost basis or just a different aesthetic sense that's good that's bad. I don't know that's very long winded way of saying I don't really know. They've been so heavily repaired I mean firstly we can't see that the one that the one that's whereabouts isn't known is so partially documented. And they're all so heavily repaired overpainted filled that it is very difficult but I don't have a clear view I'd love to know what you think that you should see. Thank you very much. While we're waiting for more question of points. I just wanted to ask you. I mean this is something that has been studied up to a point but maybe the result that is more to do and whether you have tackle the, the, you know, the quite nice issue of the relationship of this figurative and also inscriptions on the ceramics to the to manuscript painting. This is something I've looked at, and there's generally an assumption that ceramics of subservience to manuscripts, even though we have loads of ceramics and their manuscripts in the period which is always slightly problematic and using evidence that doesn't exist to make a case. It does see in the specific instance of wider Iran in the early 13th century. It's quite plausible that the people who had been doing painting on ceramics were taken or their sort of next generation were taken and put on major sort of state mandated manuscript projects. And there's certainly a loss of manuscripts that there's records and texts that refer to to their being illustrated manuscripts there certainly were, but there's so few surviving that I'm suspicious of the idea that they're just copying manuscripts, and they're doing very different things yes it's small figures on a primarily white surface summer turquoise, but beyond that, there's a three dimensionality there's no connection between text and image for the most part even where there is text. It really has anything to do with the images on ceramics whereas they're very closely tied together in the manuscript context even if the earlier scholarship on manuscripts illustration didn't recognize that. There are two very different things. There are a lot of similarities, but there are also a lot of differences you never really see any apart from ponds with fish and I'd say a large majority of those ponds with Fisher on pieces about as old as my great grandmother best. I'm always suspicious when you don't see a single example of a motif in a vast sherd corpus, yet you see lots of them that appeared from nowhere in the commercial art market in the 1930s. But that point aside, you don't tend to see the ground being depicted on figural ceramics, whereas a lot of manuscripts you do have some indication of grasses, a ground level a transition from ground to sky. There's a lot of very different things about the composition as well as the design. There are overlaps as well. The book of farrier he has an outline painted and then a slightly different more polished outline painted of a horse. Their outlines, the initial outlines in red rather than brown but there's a lot of similarities but I'd say there's probably more differences in similarity. Interesting. Thank you very much. Mariam Rosser Owen. Thanks Richard. Have you been able to tell any more about who was making the fakes in the early 20th century. Is there any documentation about this? I would love to find some of that documentation. Unfortunately, a little bit like the illicit art trade now. Drug dealers don't usually keep record books, neither criminals don't keep records of their crimes. There may well be commercial, some of the dealers still exist as corporations and may well have records but it's not something that people wanted to shout about if they knew they were up to no good. I'd certainly like to see some evidence if it was. That film, I think it was Stephen Nyman made, it was recently, who was it that taught, I can't remember her name someone was writing about it recently she'll kill me for forgetting her name it'll come to me. Keelan Overton, who seen a film which depicts a workshop making brand new Minai bowls, some of which are in famous collections that will not be named for the 13th century date on them still so there is that showing that they were being produced in Iran. There's a lot of pieces that they've got over the fractures and repairs, they've got the little pink export permit from Iran so we know a certain amount of that work was definitely being done in Iran. But there was definitely work also being additional overpaint being done in Paris, but it is a short answer I don't know any specific details about who is making or who is doing the restorations. And it is a fine line if someone's got something that's fragmentary and they want it made better and they go to a commercial restorer that there's nothing questionable about that it's only when they then try and sell it as not being restored that it's problematic so it may or the people doing the work are quite legitimate in doing what they do is stock in trade and it's just then it's subsequently marketed as something different. That doesn't really answer that. Thank you very much. I have another question about the function of this of the subjects. I mean, could you, you showed a sweet meat bowl. And also, you know I was thinking about the tiles the fragmented tile in the Louvre is in the Louvre yes. In Boston in Boston, right. And I was wondering whether you have any idea of the possible, you know, use and where I mean tiles. Yes, there's lots of evidence of tiles having been used in situ. The sacred secular term is problematic, but probably more likely to be in a palace that a mosque or a tomb but there was reuse they were taking things from palaces and using them in too. So, certainly were used in an architectural context, and something like the last sweet meat dish seems to lend itself to have been used. You can have a water cavity so you can fill them up with hot water and it will keep the food warmer. So again they have that functional element. And when it comes to the majority of men I wear and and the luster and men I wear was a big class within that same grouping. It's very hard to really identify what they would be used for. And it's not it scrapes off. You know if you start scraping eating both food out of these things with a metal spoon that the design will disappear very quickly so it is, it is problematic to understand what they are. The idea that they're they're courtly I think has been broadly dismissed you know the court has gold and silver and any ceramics they have would be Chinese imported not not domestic ways. So they're more likely to be away for the sort of urban well off to sort of show some sort of connection to courtly pleasures and the courtly lifestyle. I mean I haven't put it in my book but if you were to think of a modern comparison, you know, granny's best China with the, you know, the coronation mark or, you know, the king's birthday is about as close a comparison as you can get it's a way to be identified with an elite that you're not part of, but it has the aesthetic that ties to that so that might be at least a way in to start trying to understand what these things were and how they were used it seems odd that you. You would have a stack of 10 menai bowls that you'd see. So, I think they were kind of as much for show as anything else but it is a major problem that isn't really clearly addressed I certainly don't have a clear answer for I know I talked to you about this is sort of thought a lot about it as well. And there's no clear evidence for what they were used for, but where they are relatively well preserved there's very little evidence of where from usage it's usually as a result of burial and destruction and being in a latrine for 800 years. Sure. Thank you very much. Mariam says thanks I just wondered you know the work you had been doing on collectors collecting if anything had turned up which shed more light on on the, on the contemporary production we need to keep looking. Yes, definitely I can always praying to find something. Maybe a piece of all our various researchers together something might emerge. There is interesting stuff that the stuff I found in the gold banking. It didn't really say so much about faking but it did give a lot of information about the market and the relationship between dealers and collectors because they've got both all the material and all the archives relating to it which is this quite distinctive so I'm going back there next month in January so I might have another dig now that I know before what I'm looking for. And hey Hans says thank you very much for your wonderful presentation. Are there any significant differences between the quality of the fruit where among the words you've studied in different geographies where the pieces were made. It comes to a very good point that we don't really know where they were made. There's again more problems than solutions. The assumption based on stylistic analysis is that, you know, there's things that we know were made in Kashan, and they look very similar in terms of decoration to some of this manai and the last aware so there's a generally accepted assumption which I've certainly not got any evidence to reject the majority if not indeed all of this material was produced in and around Kashan. The problem is when you go through all the material in the National Museum of Tehran, they've got material excavated from loads of different cities all over Iran, because they're so widely dispersed. But they haven't got anything's actually found in Kashan, which is a little bit like using the using the non-existent manuscripts as evidence for antecedent using the non-existent that Kashani sources that the proof that it was all produced there. So we don't know where they were made. So stylistic analysis has been done on quite a lot of different sherds. But again, if you don't know where they're from that only tells you so much it can tell you they're slightly different, but that can be that one person's using River Rock and another person's at the foot of a mountain and using quartz in blocks. So it doesn't necessarily tell you, unless the actual waste is stuck together in a kiln context that have been excavated at a specific site, it can only tell you so much. There is definitely a lot more work that needs to be done. I mean we're only just starting, given the fact that I'm doing essentially a 19th century methodology shows how far behind the field is compared to other areas. But there are people like Muja Matin who are doing material science work to look at it from that perspective. So there is work being done both in Iran and more broadly. The one thing with Minoy is it's so broadly distributed. It's found in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Armenia, Italy. So France, in fact, we found some in France in archaeological context from the 13th century. So there are scholars in all those countries excavating and testing in their own way. So there's a huge body of knowledge that they're sort of trying to pull together. But still, we really don't know the basics. Where was it made, for example, there's a lot more things that need to be worked out, but it's a very interesting question. But what we can tell from the differences is very long. Yes, there are differences. Sometimes it's pinker and they're using a 10% ratio of clay to bind it together. So if you've got pure white clay, it's going to look very different from using a red clay, which will give a pinkish tone to the body. But there's only so much that you can know from what does that tell us when it's in a non-archeologically provenance context. Thank you. And Melanie Gibson, what do you think about the bird on some of the bases? Could it be a workshop mark? Yeah, that's that's sort of my assumption. I don't know what else it would be because, you know, it's not part of the decorative program. You're not generally seeing it. And they don't seem to be the sort of vessels that you're going to drink from. So it's sort of revealed as it's tipped up. You know, there are men eyeballs that are footless, that have decoration on underneath and one in Paris and one in Fitzwilliam, but they're relatively uncommon. And for the most part, the glaze doesn't run all the way down. They're unglazed on the inside. It's not particularly pretty. So that does suggest it must be something else. I think a workshop mark would be the best idea, or, you know, maybe even an individual, but they're probably a workshop mark. Thank you very much. Any other questions? I think you've answered lots of questions quite comprehensively. I saw one person, I think they inadvertently sent it as a direct message. They're just asking about the source of the blue color. And just to say that it's cobalt oxide, which is primarily in terms of the Iranian production from Kamsar, the mines in Kamsar, which is about, I don't know, 30, 40 kilometers outside Kashan. So it's a metal oxide. All of the colors are metal oxides. In relation to that blue, I was quite surprised to see how many pieces have the bleeding of the blue because in such complex and refined objects, it's a bit surprising to see that. It's just a result of loss of control in the kiln. You could have something on one side of the kiln where the temperature stays in the right area. Even on the inside, you can have with the updraft, the movement of heat over the outside means that the temperature doesn't spike, whereas if it starts to gather on the inside. So you've got static air versus moving air. It can mean temperature differential. So you can have the blue on the outside be fired quote unquote correctly and over fired on the inside and the same way you can have luster working on one surface of a bowl and completely either not adhered or burned off on the other surface of it. It is very technically challenging. So you could find that, and they put huge numbers of fired at once because of the cost of fuel. So it may well be the vast majority were fine and these happen not to be it might be that they all went off. But it is a very risky business because they didn't have a thermometer. Imagine trying to run a run a kiln without a thermometer. At the actual temperature you have to look at the color of things, color of the flame, how controlled it is. I mean they're amazing craftsmen, but they were working with pretty limited tools in terms of the complexity of what they were, what they were delivering. Thank you very much Richard I think. Yeah, is that everything from the audience. Do you have any private message. Mr. Darwin about the color. Yes, that is Roxana and Harry. Thank you very much for the interesting insightful presentation. Thanks for listening. Well thank you very much Richard that was really interesting and good luck with the publication of this material we are waiting. We are looking forward to that. Yeah, thank you very much and then a virtual applause to you also for answering, you know, all the questions. Thank you and goodbye. Thank you.