FRIEZE IN COLOURED AND GLAZED BRICKS, PALACE OF SUSA. FROM THE REPRODUCTION AT SOUTH KENSINGTON.
The Moorish or Arabian form constantly occurs as an ornamental cresting in carved woodwork, and also appears to have suggested an ornamental form largely used with variations in eastern carpets, notably those of Turkistan.
The treatment of the design has the severity and simplicity of early Asiatic monumental art, and is allied in treatment to the Assyrian relief work, but is more subtle and refined, and shows a finer decorative and colour sense.
In the treatment of blue the Persians always seem to have been particularly successful, and their later tile work in the Mohammedan period is well known, and continues down to our own time.
The love of blue and its use in tile work and pottery seems to have been general all over the east; it may be because of the adaptability of the metallic oxide colour to firing, but also it may be due to the pleasant relief and sense of coolness such decoration would afford to the eye in courts and interiors screened from the sun.
The old Nankin blue, so famous in Chinese porcelain, in the so-called hawthorn pattern, was described by one of the emperors as the blue of the sky showing through the white clouds after the south rain.
In carpets Persia about our sixteenth century reached a pitch of perfection in design, colouring, and material which, it would seem, has never been reached before or since. In these works we, of course, pass to a very different and much later period of Persian history, after the Arabian invasion in the seventh century, and the conversion of its people to the Mohammedan religion, under which Persian art developed in such delicate, rich, and beautiful forms.
There are very magnificent specimens of the finest types of Persian carpets now in the national collection at South Kensington, the Persian collection having been recently rearranged in the new galleries in Imperial Institute Road to very great advantage as regards lighting and opportunities of study.
The famous Holy Carpet of the mosque at Ardebil is perhaps the finest example, though there are others more inventive in pattern, if not more delicate in design or harmonious in colour. A curious feature in the pattern of this carpet is a hanging lamp, such a lamp as is used for lighting mosques, with a painted glass body, probably suspended by chains from the roof. The lamp is repeated at the end of the main ornament of the field of the carpet, facing opposite ways.