A splendid pottery bowl with a scalloped rim and decorated with moulded faces all around the exterior and presenting a deep turquoise glaze. The bowl has a ring base with moulded geometric motifs. The scalloped walls rise to the deep basin, each lobe decorated with a relief visage of a woman as well as with scrolling foliate motifs abobe.
These women have been interpreted as harpies or Buraq, and they exhibit the classic style of Seljuk portraiture.
Nishapur was a center of politics and culture in medieval Persia, and their pottery is some of the most unique and beautiful in history. The present bowl is an example of the technological innovations in ceramic decoration which were established in Persia by the end of the twelfth century. New techniques were developed as ceramics started to be made using a white frit mass instead of red clay, allowing the potter to have a brilliant white ground on which he could apply a decoration such as the present blue glaze. The blue colour of the glaze was obtained using copper as a colourant. Pieces like the one showed here may have been inspired by the blue and white glazed pottery that travelled the Silk Road from Tang Dynasty, China, leading to the development of a new distinctive style which blossomed in Nishapur.