Dish with blue and white floral design
Medium:Ceramic (stonepaste), painted with cobalt-blue under an alkali glaze, accidental splashes of copper-turquoise tin-opacified glaze
Geography: Tabriz, Iran
Date: Mid-16th century AD
Period: Safavid Period
Object number: 909.26.44
DescriptionThis vessel was intended to be a normal blue-and-white dish, a typical product of Tabriz in Iran in the mid-16th century. However, included in the kiln was another vessel, stacked directly above this one. The second vessel had a bright copper-turquoise glaze made opaque with the addition of tin oxide and. as was typical, would have had a small amount of lead oxide in the glaze aswell, included along with the tin. Glazes with lead in them tend to melt at lower temperatures than the glazes which are entirely fluxed with the alkali elements soda and potash, so the firing conditions for the blue-and-white should have meant a slightly higher temperature firing. The higher temperature made the turquoise vessel's glaze to run down onto the vessel below it, creating these splashes of colour.
Object History: Purchased from S. M. Franck & Co. Ltd, England, in 1909.
