The splendor of Islamic glass is revealed in this remarkable publication, the first major study of the subject in over seventy years. Glass objects rarely bear inscriptions that provide vital information, and being so readily portable, they have throughout history been carried far from their place of origin. In a feat of patient scholarship, Stefano Carboni draws on a huge range of sources in many languages and from many disciplines to produce this comprehensive history of Islamic glassmaking.
The book is a catalogue of the superb al-Sabah Collection in Kuwait and includes clear and informative introductions to each period, as well as detailed descriptions of some 500 individual objects and fragments, accompanied by hundreds of color photographs and specially commissioned line drawings. It begins with the legacy of Roman and Sasanian Persian traditions in the early years of Islam and extends well over a thousand years to the last phase of glass production in Mughal India and Safavid and Qajar Iran in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The discussion covers a huge assortment of glass forms and decorative techniques, including the enameled and gilded glass of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Egypt and Syria, still unsurpassed in its magnificence, as well as many lesser-known categories of glass common to both the early and medieval periods in many locations, ranging from the undecorated to those with applied, cut, molded or impressed decoration.
Dr. Carboni's authoritative text, the beauty of the objects themselves and the fine quality of the reproductions combine to reveal to scholar and layman alike an aspect of Islamic art that has for too long been neglected.