The invention of luster painting – the decoration of ceramics with a glittering, metallic film – is usually credited to ninth-century Muslim potters in Iraq. A complicated technique in which metal oxides are fired in a reducing kiln, luster painting passed within a few centuries from Iraq via Egypt to Iran (Persia), presumably through migrant potters who guarded the technique as a trade secret. The decorative potential of luster’s other-worldly iridescence was explored by Iranian potters during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, a period of brilliant innovation and prolific production in the ceramic arts circumscribed by the reigns of the Great Saljuqs and the Il-Khanids.

The finest painting and most ambitious decorative programs for lusterware were produced in the central Iranian city of Kashan. Several stylistic features of the Gardner Museum’s plate suggest an attribution to Kashan: the monumental figures set against a luster background, the kidney-shaped leaves, the plump-breasted bird, and the minute spirals painted and scratched through the luster. Scholars have linked the plate to two famous luster-painted plates in the Freer Gallery of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum, because their ceramic bodies seem to have been produced from the same mold with 29 scallops in the cavetto. The Freer plate, arguably the most accomplished of the three, bears a date of 1210.

At its center, the plate in the Gardner Museum presents a vignette of courtly life in the classical period of Islamic civilization. The elevated status of an elegantly attired couple is revealed in their refined decorum and possessions. The serene countenances of the couple betray neither the pains of separation and romantic disappointment lamented in the concentric bands of poetry, nor the pleasures of their musical activity. The figure on the left plucks an ancient harp (chang) that rests on his knee. For centuries, the Persian harp was one of the most prized instruments in aristocratic circles, and was celebrated in poetry and painting. The lower hand of the figure on the right holds a folded handkerchief (mandil), another allusion to wealth and refined manners. Beautiful and costly handkerchiefs were a source of pride among the wealthier classes and an elaborate etiquette governed their usage.

Source: Mary McWilliams, "Ceramic Plate: A Courtly Couple," in Eye of the Beholder, edited by Alan Chong et al. (Boston: ISGM and Beacon Press, 2003): 168.

Purchased in 1912 from H. K. Kevorkian, New York.