Tiles collection of Negarestan Garden Museum

Tiles collection of Negarestan Garden Museum

The current exhibition is a diverse collection of decorative architectural tiles and arrays found in Negarestan Garden, which have been left over time and mostly belong to the 13th-14th centuries AH. These works often belong to plinths and pediments, with plant motifs that are created with underglaze, mosaic and bulging mold techniques.

The art of tiling in Iran

The art of tiling in Iran has long been used as an important element in architecture to decorate buildings. Tile in its modern sense was used to decorate buildings after the Islamic era and in the fifth century of Hegira. The artists of the Ilkhanate, Timurid, Safavid and Qajar periods each contributed to the prestige of this art, and tiles gradually became an integral part of Islamic architecture in Iran. During this period, in addition to mosques and tombs, palaces, noble buildings, gates and government institutions were also decorated with tiles. Especially during the era of Nasereddin Shah, the use of tile making industry became widespread, and in addition to the usual use of plant motifs in Iranian architecture, pictorial scenes were also added to it. In most of the Qajar mansions, mosaic and clay tiles are used for decoration. Also, using the method of painting on the glaze and under the glaze was one of the other common methods in the Qajar era tile work.

Characteristics of the main building of Negarestan Palace or Garden

The main building of the Negarestan Palace or Garden was also built in the same period and between 1843-1849 by the order of Fathali Shah Qajar outside Tehran city and because there were many paintings and drawings of Fathali Shah and his courtiers in the different buildings of this garden, it became known as Negarestan. In the mentioned written sources, there was a tall building with several houses decorated with tiles at the main entrance of Negarestan Garden, which was located on the south side and almost opposite Baharestan square, but no trace of it remains today. Tiles were also used for decoration in other buildings. Later, with the change in the usage of Negarestan Garden to a university and its architecture change with the approval of the establishment of Tehran University in 1934, the Qajar mansions were destroyed and replaced with new architecture for the education of researchers, but tiles were still used to decorate its entrances.