Lajvardina ware

Arthur Lane notes that Abu al-Qasim of Kashan and a later commentator on his work mention a lajvardina ware still made at the end of the thirteenth century, and identifies it with pottery and tiles painted over the glaze in a limited palette of opaque red, black, white and gold leaf, the gold cut into angular shapes before application. ¹

• Deep blue (lajvard) and turquoise glazes were the favourite grounds, and the designs often show the Chinese lotus, phoenix and dragon that became popular under the Ilkhanid Mongols. ¹
• Its shapes resemble the lustre and underglaze-painted wares of the Sultanabad district; Lane finds it clumsy in potting and uninteresting in ornament, with a coarse greyish body of inferior quality. ¹
• He sees it as a simplification of the minai technique using overglaze colours alone, a simplification general in Persia by the mid-thirteenth century; examples include polygonal wall tiles found at Konya, probably made there by Persian refugees about 1260. ¹