TEHRAN - Tilework during Iran’s Safavid era was not confined to geometric patterns, arabesques and inscriptions used to decorate religious buildings. 

In 17th-century Isfahan, the Safavid capital, square tiles increasingly became a medium for pictorial compositions depicting people, gardens and scenes of courtly life. Examples of this distinctive form of tilework are now preserved in major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

One of the notable examples is a large tile panel in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dating to the first quarter of the 17th century and attributed to Iran, probably Isfahan, the panel measures approximately 115.6 by 138.7 centimeters. It consists of square tiles, each about 22.5 centimetres across, assembled to form a single continuous scene depicting a woman and three men in a garden setting, ISNA reported on Friday. 

The significance of such works lies not only in their imagery but also in the technique used to produce them. The tiles were made using a method known as cuerda seca, or dry cord, in which lines of a glaze-resistant material separated areas of different colours. During firing, the separating material burned away, leaving dark, dry lines between the coloured sections. This allowed several coloured glazes to be applied next to one another without running together.

The technique was particularly useful during the Safavid period because it enabled artists to produce richly coloured compositions more efficiently and at a lower cost than some more elaborate mosaic-tile techniques. Research by the Metropolitan Museum indicates that Isfahan and Nain were important centers of fine tile production during the Safavid period. While geometric and vegetal designs continued to dominate mosques, religious schools and other monuments, a different approach developed in secular architecture, where individual square tiles became components of larger pictorial scenes.

This approach required artists to think beyond the decoration of individual tiles. A large composition had to be divided into numerous small sections, with each tile functioning as a piece of an overall visual puzzle. Preliminary design, color coordination, the proportions of human figures and the continuity of landscape elements across adjoining tiles were therefore crucial to the finished work. The wall itself became the ultimate canvas—one made not of paper or cloth, but of glazed ceramic tiles.

The subjects of these compositions were closely connected with the Safavid tradition of miniature painting. The Metropolitan Museum notes that garden scenes featuring groups of men and women were among the subjects popular with Safavid painters. The depiction of figures in gardens, together with details of clothing, social interaction and leisure, brought aspects of courtly and everyday life into architectural spaces.

This distinction between religious and secular tilework is important for understanding the development of Safavid pictorial ceramics. In mosques and other religious buildings, vegetal, geometric and calligraphic decoration remained central. In royal residences, garden pavilions and other secular settings, however, representations of people and narrative scenes had greater scope to appear. Tilework consequently evolved from a primarily decorative architectural element into a visual medium capable of conveying aspects of courtly culture, gardens, clothing and social life.

Recent art-historical research has also provided clues about the original architectural settings of some surviving panels. Farshid Emami, a researcher in Islamic art and architecture, has examined groups of Safavid pictorial tiles in research published by the Metropolitan Museum. His work suggests that examples now dispersed among the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Louvre and the Victoria and Albert Museum may have originally been associated with a now-lost Safavid building.

Safavid pictorial tiles represent an important intersection of several Iranian artistic traditions: ceramics, tilemaking, painting, miniature art and architecture. Their production required both technical knowledge of ceramic materials and glazing and the artistic ability to design figures and complex scenes. Viewed up close, the works appear as collections of individual ceramic pieces; from an appropriate distance, they come together as unified and carefully composed paintings.

The enduring importance of these works lies in this close relationship between image and architecture. During the Safavid period, tiles could serve not merely as a surface covering but as a medium for depicting stories and scenes from the social and cultural world of their time. Although many examples are now dispersed in museums around the world, each surviving panel provides a valuable record of the artistic, architectural and visual culture of Safavid Iran.
AM