Minakari Plate 30cm
This minakari wall plate carries the traditional minakari design language onto pottery, drawn in black pen and glaze by the artist Azar Alimohammadi.
- This plate is inspired by the designs of Minakari, worked on pottery.
- Technique: Enamelled with black pen and glaze
- Material: Pottery
- Baking temperature: 950 degrees
- Washable with water and a soft scotch pad
- Size: D. 30 cm
- Artist: Azar Alimohammadi
Please note that no two handmade items are exactly alike.
Click to see more of our decorative objects.
About the artwork:
The tradition this plate draws on is called Mina, with a rich history of around 5000 years. Mina means blue in the ancient Persian language, and the blue in the work is a symbol of heaven’s sky. Although blue is the traditional colour, contemporary Mina handcrafts can be found in a variety of colours, such as green, grey and pink.
In its classic form, Mina is the art of painting and colouring the surface of metal objects. The paint is mostly prepared from metal oxide powders mixed with special oils and solvents into a creamy paint, with different metal oxides producing different colours. The objects, mainly copper, are made by hammering and forming, cleaned thoroughly, covered with a white enamel coating and baked at around 700° in stages; even minor dirt, hand oil or moisture can crack the final product. Each unique pattern is then transferred from a punched paper drawing with graphite powder, painted carefully by hand, and fired once more at around 800° so the colour ends up stable, washable and anti-scratch. That hand-painting stage is the spirit of Mina, where the artist works the details until the piece is unique, modern and beautiful. You can see the metal version of the craft in our minakari copper enamel plate 30cm.
Minakari on Ceramics
Alongside copper, minakari’s intricate floral and geometric patterns are also used to decorate ceramics with colourful enamel work, and this plate belongs to that ceramic branch of the craft, fired at a higher temperature of 950 degrees. Hung on a wall it reads as art; laid flat it makes a striking nowruz table decoration beside the haft sin. Browse the rest of our Persian plates to find its companions.
