FIVE CUERDA SECA POTTERY TILES, PERSIA ZAND DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY

Each of square form made of stone-paste, painted in yellow, turquoise, cobalt blue, black and opaque white with manganese purple in the cuerda seca (dry-cord) technique. Three tiles decorated with a figure of an archer seated on a horseback aiming at a deer in hunting scene amongst blossoming trees. Two tiles decorated with a seated youth drinking wine in a landscape.
20.5 by 20.5 cm.

CATALOGUE NOTE
Cuerda seca (Spanish for ‘dry cord’) developed as a technique alongside tile mosaics in the latter part of the fourteenth century in Central Asia and consisted of complete tiles painted with colored pigments which were separated from each other to prevent running by an oily substance mixed with manganese, which left a dark lining after firing.The technique continued to be utilised throughout Persia into the seventeenth and early into the eighteenth century.