A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c19.s6.1

c19.s6.1

The practice of decorating wall surface with coloured enamelled bricks or tiles was of very ancient date in Persia, and derived ultimately from Babylonia. The Lion and Archer friezes from Susa now in the Louvre, and well reproduced by Perrot and Chipiez, are the best examples of the art as practised in Achaemenian times.³ But the style of those friezes is not imitated in any extant Indian work. The Indo-Muhammadan enamelled or glazed tiles were copied from a much later development of the art in Persia, where the ancient technique apparently was never wholly forgotten. This later Persian work shows traces of Chinese influence.