Plaster cast of a tile, from fireplace surround of ten parts, glazed moulded fritware, painted design of ogival medallions and half-palmette borders, with two Persian inscriptions naming the patron Albert Lemaire and artist `Ali Muhammad Isfahani, Tehran, Iran, dated 1302H, 1884-1885

Plaster cast of the tiles from a fireplace surround (522:1-1899 through 522:10-1899). The original fireplace is ten tiles comprising: six rectangular border tiles moulded and underglaze painted in polychrome with alternating floral centres and borders of split leaf scrolling foliate design on a blue ground, and four square tile (2 corner) similarly decorated with a continuous foliate scroll and (two unglazed) with inscriptions, with a turquoise quarter medallion and foliate scrollwork diagonally alligned.

This fireplace surround was commissioned around 1884-5, by a French composer of military music, Alfred Lemaire (1842-1907), as a large set of tiles (see 510, 511, & 512-1889). The tiles reference the colourful, monumental seventeenth-century multi-tile panels that decorated palaces in Isfahan during the Safavid period. The subjects were typically of elegant courtiers drinking wine in lush gardens (see for example V&A 139-1891).

522:10-1889