THE POTTER'S ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 936, 19 July 1957, Page 13

THE POTTER'S ART

ISLAMIC POTTERY, by Arthur Lane; Faber and Faber, English price 25/-. [SLAMIC POTTERY adds yet another monograph to the already distinguished list published by Faber and Faber. It carries the hall mark of quality in its faultless production. The photographs, both in colour and black and white, fulfil their function exactly. They round off the ample descriptions, piece by piece, of the catalogue, and give added point to the introduction by Arthur Lane, Keeper of Ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum, whose reputation grows with each contribution he makes in the field of ceramics. This book deals with the collection of Sir Eldred Hitchcock, who has essayed an almost impossible task. Over 25 years he has brought together 79 examples of the potter’s art fashioned over a period of 600 years in the world of Islam which stretched from the Middle East to the Atlantic, embracing both North Africa and Spain. But these were turbulent centuries when power and capitals shifted as dynasties. declined or invaders ravaged, and man’s work in fragile clay was hardly likely to survive such vicissitudes. Hence Sir Eldred’s self-imposed .task called for research, labour and patience. Most of the collection comprises reconstituted broken shards buried for ages and preserved and given added glow in their long sleep in earthy graves scattered in the vast between Persia and Egypt. For the future enthusiast there is relief in prospect through the discovery of buried treasure recently unearthed near Samar-kand-a cache of artifacts in pristine state. This monograph describes and _ illustrates a range of achievement that illumines the roots of Islamic art. One sees the inhibitions as well as the outlook of Mohammedanism, its lessons from the East and its teachings for the West. The strange tones of the pottery base, the fierce colours of the glaze, the exotic arabesques and writing, the shapes devoid of fantasy are redolent of the sun-scorched lands that Islam pervaded. They tell of inner conflicts, if outward conformity. They portray the influence of yet another all-embracing theocracy that tended man through the so-called Dark Ages. Islamic pottery is another facet of the great days of a people that gave the world so much in music, medicine and mathematics. The book that deals therewith is an asset to be read with joy and retained with

affection.

D.

Goldblatt