Hetjens Museum
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Conventional history informs us that the earliest known civilisation developed in Mesopotamia in the fertile land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. It therefore comes as no surprise to learn that this was also the region where pottery first started to be produced on a larger scale to satisfy the practical needs of these early settlements.
Pottery was therefore also able to evolve in this region early on, making it possible to develop and assimilate new techniques and technologies, such as in kiln design and the potter’s wheel and eventually the introduction of lead-based glazing, leading up to the rich palette of colours, stylised naturalistic motifs and sgraffito decorations found throughout the Middle East and produced in the pottery centres of Garrus, Rayy, Kashan and Gurgan between the ninth and thirteenth centuries.
(Laurenz Heinrich Hetjens, ceramics collector extraordinaire, painted by Léon Herbo, 1875)
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Hetjens-Deutsches Keramikmuseum (German Ceramics Museum)
Schulstraße 4
40213 Düsseldorf