Ceramics with metallic lustre decoration. A detailed knowledge of Islamic productions from 9th century until Renaissance

TL;DR

This research investigates the technological evolution of Islamic glazed ceramics with metallic lustre decoration from the 9th century to the Renaissance, analyzing over a hundred objects using non-destructive methods.

Contribution

It provides a detailed characterization of lustre layers across various Islamic production sites and periods, revealing significant variations in composition and structure.

Findings

Lustre layer features vary significantly across different periods and regions.

Composition and structure of lustre layers changed dramatically through history.

Non-destructive analysis methods effectively characterize ceramic decoration details.

Abstract

This paper describes research on the technological evolution of glazed ceramics with a metallic lustre decoration starting from their emergence in the Near East until the Hispano-Moresque productions. That research covers the main known Islamic production sites and periods: Abbasid (Mesopotamia); Fatimid (Egypt); Timurid, Mongol, and Safavid (Iran); Ayyubid and Mamluk (Syria); Nasrid and Hispano-Moresque (Spain). It was allowed by the access to more than hundred full preserved objects or fragments supplied by French national museums (Mus\'ee du Louvre DAI, Mus\'ee national du Moyen Age, Mus\'ee national de C\'eramique). The characterisation of the composition and structure of the ceramics and of their decoration is mostly done through non-destructive analyses methods. The thickness and metal content of the surface lustre layers are quantified thanks to ion beam analyses performed on a particle accelerator: PIXE (particle-induced X-ray emission) for the terracotta and glazes composition and RBS (Rutherford backscattering spectrometry) for the thickness and metal content of the lustre surface layers. The preliminary results show that the features of the decorated ceramics have undergone dramatic variations when transmitted from a production to another, not only, as expected, in the composition of terracotta and glazes, but also in the thickness, the structure and the composition distribution of the lustre layers.