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A Note on Persian Blue and White Wares with Armenian Monograms in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The great and important Armenian colony of New Julfa in Iṣfahān, Iran, was in existence from the very beginning of the seventeenth century, when Shāh ‘Abbās I deported large groups of Armenians from their homeland to the districts of Chahār Maḥāl and Iṣfahān, the capital, and to Perria (Aleppo). In a very short time, expatriate Armenians made New Julfa a great suburb of the city, gaining universal recognition as an important eastern centre of trade and commerce and glowingly described by all European travellers who visited Iṣfahān in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1975

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References

1 On the door of the St. George Church in New Julfa there is a tile-panel representing the Adoration of the Magi. Mr. John Carswell, writing about this panel, states: “Above the north door of St. George's Church is the earliest panel dated 1619, depicting The Adoration of the Magi (Plate 20).” Again, “The north door is also framed with brick and tile mosaic, and above it is a second cuerda seca tile panel, The Adoration of the Magi (Plate 20). It consists of twenty-eight tiles, inscribed in Armenian, and dated 1619; it is thus the earliest dated group of pictorial tiles of this type.” Finally, under Plate 20 again, is the date 1619. (New Julfa: The Armenian churches and other buildings, Oxford, 1968, 27 and 38.) This is an obvious error, since one can clearly see on Plate 20 the inscription of this panel with its date in Armenian as 1719. Another pictorial panel of tiles at the same church executed in the same manner as the Magi is dated 1716/1717.

2 Travels in Persia, 1627–1629, abridged and edited by SirFoster, William, London, 1928, 122Google Scholar.

3 The voyages and travells of the ambassadors … written originally by Adam Olearius … Faithfully rendered into English by John Davies, London, 1662, 276Google Scholar.