Fritware jug, with polychrome decoration and gold leaf in and over an opaque, white glaze. Minai type
Iran, Kashan; c. 1200
H: 12.4; Diam: 14 cm
Minai ware was only produced in a short period under the Seljuks and their successors in around 1200. With the Mongols’ destruction of Kashan at the end of the 1220s, ceramics manufacture stopped for a few decades.
While Kashan reemerged as a ceramics center and high-quality lustreware was produced once again, colorful minai ware had evidently gone out of fashion. Although Abu al-Qasim al-Kashani (i.e. from Kashan) was able to describe the minai technique in his treatise on ceramics from 1301, he noted that the type was no longer produced.
Inv. no. 56/1966
Published in:
Jean Soustiel: “Introduction à l´art musulman: la céramique reflet de l´islam” in Art et curiosite, 1970;
C .L. Davids Samling. Fjerde Del : Jubilæumsskrift 1945-70, København 1970, cat.no. 6, p. 199;
André Leth: Davids Samling. Islamisk kunst = The David Collection. Islamic Art, København 1975, p. 59;
Art from the World of Islam. 8th-18th century, Louisiana, Humlebæk 1987, cat.no. 101;
Kjeld von Folsach: Islamic art. The David Collection, Copenhagen 1990, cat.no. 114;
Kjeld von Folsach, Torben Lundbæk and Peder Mortensen (eds.): Sultan, Shah and Great Mughal: the history and culture of the Islamic world, The National Museum, Copenhagen 1996, cat.no. 187;
Kjeld von Folsach: Art from the World of Islam in The David Collection, Copenhagen 2001, cat.no. 168;
