"A magnificent job. Precious Materials is a superb achievement and has set a very high standard for future books and catalogues of Islamic metalwork. I look forward to volume 2." ― Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, London)

★ Co-compiled by experts from the Department of Islamic Art at the Louvre and archaeometallurgists, this book boasts a research team with profound professional backgrounds, ensuring both academic rigor and collection authority of its content.
★ Highly praised by Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, London), it is hailed as a benchmark work in the study of Islamic metalwork and enjoys extremely high recognition in the industry.
★ Featuring more than 150 pieces of medieval Iranian metal cultural relics, including a large number of previously unpublished treasures, it is equipped with high-definition color pictures, close-up shots and X-ray images, combining both appreciation and research value.

A historic collection of metal art from ancient Iran, featuring images of more than 150 objects described in detail and fully illustrated, some with X-rays.

Medieval metalwork is one of the artistic highlights of the Iranian world, as well as of the Département des Arts de l’Islam at the Louvre in Paris, which holds more than one hundred and fifty objects from this period. A new approach to the study of a historic collection, Precious Material: The Arts of Metal in the Medieval Iranian World is a comprehensive overview of the production of metal in medieval Iran. Although this is one of the most important collections in the world, the objects, some well-known but many more unpublished, have never been studied or published as an ensemble. This volume includes a presentation of the collection through the lens of its centers of manufacture, a full technical analysis, as well as the functions and contexts in which the pieces were used. Each object is fully described and illustrated in color with close-up or X-ray images, and many inscriptions have been translated and are included in the catalog entries.

Annabelle Collinet is in charge of the Medieval Iranian Collection at the Département des Arts de l’Islam at the Louvre Museum in Paris. She is the coauthor of Nishapur Revisited: Stratigraphy and Ceramics of the Qohandez.

David Bourgarit is an archeometallurgist and research scientist.

Yannick Lintz is the former director of the Département des Arts de l’Islam at the Louvre and the current director of the Musée Guimet in Paris.

Melanie Gibson is senior editor of the Gingko Library Art Series.