Nishapur: Pottery of the Early Islamic Period

"Nishapur: Pottery of the Early Islamic Period" is a book by Charles Kyrle Wilkinson, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1973, presenting the pottery recovered by the Museum's expedition at Nishapur. ^{3 2}

The book is limited to pieces the Museum excavated between 1935 and 1940 and in 1947, plus a few acquired by the expedition directly from peasants who found them in their fields or while building roads; nothing bought on the market or found outside Nishapur is included, so that the material is of certain origin. ² It covers the pottery alone, although the excavations also yielded glass, metalwork, many coins, and wall decoration of glazed bricks, carved and painted stucco, and paintings on white plaster. ² The author notes that his findings differ from some of the first reports published in the Museum's Bulletin between 1936 and 1942, and that some of their mistaken dates passed into other writers' books. ²

After a foreword, colour plates and an introduction on Nishapur's history, the excavated sites and the coins, the book divides the pottery into twelve groups: buff ware, colour-splashed ware, black on white ware, polychrome on white ware, slip-painted ware with coloured engobe, opaque white ware and its imitations, opaque yellow ware, ware with yellow-staining black, monochrome ware, Chinese wares, alkaline-glazed ware and its moulds and unglazed ware, followed by an appendix and bibliography. ¹

The foreword says Wilkinson spent forty-three years at the Museum, working in three departments — Egyptian Art, Ancient Near Eastern Art and Islamic Art — and that he alone carried on research on the Nishapur finds after the expedition team scattered in the Second World War. ^{4 5}