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

Delhia Chabanne (1) , Marc Aucouturier (1) , Anne Bouquillon (1) , Evelyne Darque-Ceretti (2) , Sophie Makariou (3) , Xavier Dectot (4) , Antoinette Faÿ-Hallé (5) , Delphine Miroudot (3)

1 C2RMF - Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France
2 CEMEF - Centre de Mise en Forme des Matériaux
3 Musée du Louvre, DAI
4 Musée du Moyen Age
5 musée national de la céramique

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 (musée du Louvre DAI, musée national du Moyen-Âge, musée national de Céramique). 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.

Mots clés: Ceramic; metallic lustre; ion beam analyses; Islam

Domaines: Matériaux

Delhia Chabanne, Marc Aucouturier, Anne Bouquillon, Evelyne Darque-Ceretti, Sophie Makariou, et al.. Ceramics with metallic lustre decoration. A detailed study of Islamic productions from the 9th century until the Renaissance. Matériaux & Techniques, 2012, 100 (1), pp.47-68. ⟨10.1051/mattech/2011142⟩. ⟨hal-00686405⟩