This book examines the well-known but still poorly understood corpus of lajvardina ware from Iran, Central Asia and Russia. Acting as a follow-up volume to Mina'i Ware: A Reassessment and Comprehensive Study of Iranian Polychrome Overglaze Wares Through Sherds (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), it employs a broadly similar methodological approach to the next phase in the development of overglaze painted wares. Most vessels in museums are rebuilt, often from pieces of multiple different vessels with extensive plaster fill and modern overpaint. This is similar to mina’i wares, but, unlike the earlier technique, the majority of extant lajvardina wares are tiles, and not subject to the same level of restoration and overpainting. Beginning with a study of the process of transition from mina’i to lajvardina (with a shift from primarily white glaze to cobalt blue, a decline in figural decoration and a proliferation of new vessel forms), the book then moves on to address the extant corpus of tiles and vessels and integrates the later, related, lajvardina wares produced in Central Asia and Russia in the fourteenth century for the first time. Finally, the book examines the reception, trade, publication and display of lajvardina from the late nineteenth century to today.

Dr Richard Piran McClary is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of York. He received his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2015. He has lectured extensively on a range of subjects related to medieval Islamic art and architecture, and has conducted fieldwork in India, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia and across the Middle East. He is a specialist in the architecture and ceramics of the medieval Iranian world, and the history of the Islamic art market. He has published three monographs; Mina’i Ware: A Reassessment and Comprehensive Study of Iranian Polychrome Overglaze Wares through Sherds (EUP, 2024), Medieval Monuments of Central Asia. Qarakhanid Architecture of the 11th and 12th Centuries (EUP, 2020), and Rum Seljuq Architecture 1170-1220. The Patronage of Sultans (EUP, 2017). He has edited Stucco in the Islamic World: Studies of Architectural Ornament from Spain to India (EUP, 2025), and co-edited a volume with Andrew Peacock, entitled Turkish History and Culture in India. Identity, Art and Transregional Connections (Brill, 2020). He has also published articles in numerous journals, including: Muqarnas, Iran, Persica, Anatolian Studies, the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. He has served as a trustee and the Research Director for the British Institute of Persian Studies, and is managing editor of the Journal of Islamic Art and Architecture.