Bowl with Water-Weed Motif

In the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries Iran was ruled by various dynasties, the most important of which were the Buyids and the Seljuqs. Although many of the place attributions traditionally assigned to Iranian ceramics of this period derive from the trade rather than from scientific excavations, it is safe to assume that an enormous range of wares was produced at sites throughout north-central and central Iran during Buyid and Seljuq times. As the many fine thirteenth- and fourteenth-century wares from Rayy, Kashan, and other sites demonstrate, the highly destructive Mongol conquest of Iran in the 1220s does not seem to have disrupted ceramic production. A renewed interest in Chinese ceramics, the increased use of a gritty white ceramic body called "frit-ware," and a multiplicity of techniques, such as molding, carving, incising, and overglaze painting in luster or polychrome, characterize the brilliant output of late tenth- to fourteenth-century Iranian ceramics.