Precious Materials

A historic collection of metal art from ancient Iran, featuring images of more than 150 objects described in detail and fully illustrated, some with X-rays.

Medieval metalwork is one of the artistic highlights of the Iranian world, as well as of the Département des Arts de l’Islam at the Louvre in Paris, which holds more than one hundred and fifty objects from this period. A new approach to the study of a historic collection, Precious Material: The Arts of Metal in the Medieval Iranian World is a comprehensive overview of the production of metal in medieval Iran. Although this is one of the most important collections in the world, the objects, some well-known but many more unpublished, have never been studied or published as an ensemble. This volume includes a presentation of the collection through the lens of its centers of manufacture, a full technical analysis, as well as the functions and contexts in which the pieces were used. Each object is fully described and illustrated in color with close-up or X-ray images, and many inscriptions have been translated and are included in the catalog entries.
 

Annabelle Collinet is in charge of the Medieval Iranian Collection at the Département des Arts de l’Islam at the Louvre Museum in Paris. She is the coauthor of Nishapur Revisited: Stratigraphy and Ceramics of the Qohandez.

David Bourgarit is an archeometallurgist and research scientist.

Yannick Lintz is the former director of the Département des Arts de l’Islam at the Louvre and the current director of the Musée Guimet in Paris.

Melanie Gibson is a well-known authority on Middle Eastern ceramics, writing and lecturing on them worldwide. A council member of the Oriental Ceramic Society, she is also a trustee of the Al-Tajir Trust and a trustee of the Friends of Leighton House, where she first became fascinated by the history behind the creation of the Arab Hall.