Shelf 5. Persia

A very large portion of the museum’s Persian collection comprises splinters and fragments of bowls and other kinds of vessels. The objects now on view in this exhibition represent only a fraction of the pieces owned by the museum. They are representative of what can be found in excavations—whole bowls and vessels are only a small part of everything that has been unearthed.

Although these fragments don’t convey the full history, they give us a glimpse of some of the more prominent motifs and patterns. For example, many of these fragments have motifs that look like flowers and leaves. They also indicate that symmetry was important.