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March’s Museum Piece of the Month is a Lajvard tile from the Ilkhanid dynasty. Every Saturday in March, from noon onwards, Art Historian Gaspar Aranda will analyse the piece in Room VII of the Alhambra Museum, as part of a free programme offered by Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife (PAG).
This wall tile was decorated using a technique known as Lajvard or Lajvardina (from the Farsi word for “lapis lazuli”). The technique was not used in Hispano-Islamic ceramics and was the most complex and costly process used in Islamic pottery. The piece originally formed part of a panel of star and cross-shaped tiles in an Iranian building of the Mongol Ilkhanid dynasty (1256-1336).
We can trace the steps involved in the decorative process by means of a direct analysis of the piece. The most apparent aspects of the tile are its thinness (1.6 cm), its cross shape (with arms damaged and restored), the slight border on the front, and the decoration on the surface, in low relief with four stems with leaves laid out in a cross shape from the centre to the ends of the arms. This indicates that a mould was used to obtain the shape and decoration, as has been verified in other similar tiles.
