Precious Materials

Medieval metalwork is one of the artistic highlights of the Iranian world, as well as of the Departement 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 metalin 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 Although this is one of the most important collections in the world, the objects, some well-known but many more unpublished, have never been studied or published as an ensemble.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