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Lot Essay
The interior of the Imamzada Yahya, a small but exquisite shrine in Veramin in Northern Iran, was once covered in cross tiles of this type, alternated with similarly decorated star tiles. The crisp drawing of the lustre-painted decoration makes them amongst the finest to come from any pre-Mongol monument in Iran.
Most of these tiles are now in private collections or in museums and have been widely published. The British Museum has a large collection, several of them dated (Venetia Porter, Islamic Tiles, London, 1995, p.35, pl.19) and the Victoria and Albert Museum also has some (Arthur Lane, A Guide to the Collection of Tiles, London, 1960, pl.3A and in Oliver Watson, Persian Lustre Ware, London, 1985, pl.K). Further tiles are also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Stefano Carboni and Tomoko Masuya, Persian Tiles, New York, 1993, p.15, pl. 10a-c). The spectacular mihrab from the shrine is in the late Doris Duke's Hawaii mansion (S. Littlefield, Doris Duke's Shangri La, Honolulu, 2002, p.19). A panel of five tiles from the Imamzada Yahya, previously in the collection of J.W.N Van Achterbergh, sold in Christie’s, Amsterdam, 1 November 2005, lot 81.
Most of these tiles are now in private collections or in museums and have been widely published. The British Museum has a large collection, several of them dated (Venetia Porter, Islamic Tiles, London, 1995, p.35, pl.19) and the Victoria and Albert Museum also has some (Arthur Lane, A Guide to the Collection of Tiles, London, 1960, pl.3A and in Oliver Watson, Persian Lustre Ware, London, 1985, pl.K). Further tiles are also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Stefano Carboni and Tomoko Masuya, Persian Tiles, New York, 1993, p.15, pl. 10a-c). The spectacular mihrab from the shrine is in the late Doris Duke's Hawaii mansion (S. Littlefield, Doris Duke's Shangri La, Honolulu, 2002, p.19). A panel of five tiles from the Imamzada Yahya, previously in the collection of J.W.N Van Achterbergh, sold in Christie’s, Amsterdam, 1 November 2005, lot 81.