Workshops

Princes, Dervishes, and Dragons: Exploring Safavid Painted Tiles at ROM

Lisa Golombek (PhD., U. of Michigan, 1968); is Curator Emeritus (Islamic Art) at ROM and Professor Emerita, University of Toronto (retired 2005). Author and co-author of five books and over 70 articles covering a wide range of topics in the field of Islamic arts, including architecture (The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan with D. Wilber, 1988), ceramics, epigraphy, textiles, and Persian gardens, her main focus has been on the cultures of greater Iran, including Afghanistan and Central Asia. Her period of specialty was the fifteenth century, but since taking on the study of Safavid pottery, her interests have shifted to the pre-modern period in Iran (c. 1600–1900). The Isfahan Urban History Project, carried out in 1974–76, traced the historical growth of the city and laid the foundations for her later research on Safavid palaces. The hunt for tiles across the globe has led to investigation into the dispersal of the Iranian cultural heritage by dealers catering to demand from European markets in the late nineteenth century. This material will form a chapter in the forthcoming book, Golombek, Lisa and Robert B. Mason, Princes, Dervishes and Dragons: The Tile Arcade from Safavid Isfahan (c. 1685–95) (Edinburgh University Press, 2025).

Robert B. J. Mason (PhD., U. of Oxford, 1994) is an archaeologist, anthropologist, art-historian, geologist, and materials scientist with a particular area of specialisation in the material culture and archaeology of the Middle East and Europe during the Islamic and Mediaeval periods (roughly 500 AD to the present). His archaeological fieldwork was based in Syria from 1998 until 2009, particularly in the citadel of Aleppo, and since 2004 at the monastery of St. Moses (Deir Mar Musa). The monastery, 90 km north of Damascus in the mountainous Syrian desert, was the focus of Dr. Mason's survey of the site and its environs, recording features possibly as early as the Neoloithic. Research at the monastery led to a growing research interest in the archaeology of Christianity and monotheism generally in the Holy Land. Ceramics and vitreous materials are Mason's primary area of analytical research, particularly the high-technology glazed ceramics made in the Middle East between c. 650 and 1700 AD and he is an authority in the application of petrographic analysis, a geological technique used to identify minerals and ultimately, where pottery was made. Robert Mason was also responsible for the collections database and provision of cataloguing for the Egyptian, Far Eastern, Greek & Roman, and West Asian collections at ROM, and is appointed as an Associate Professor at the Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations Department, University of Toronto.