This is the first major book about Islamic stucco, and the central theme is the re-examination of the uses of stucco in architecture across the Islamic world in the pre-modern period.
The book engages with new methodological approaches, including those that go beyond traditional art-historical ones, and works with a wide range of disciplines, including material science and archaeology. It includes numerous sites that have not been previously studied in detail, as well as new approaches to the study of the material, and presents a greater understanding of the use of colour and understanding of materiality.
It includes contributions from a range of leading scholars from around the world working on this ubiquitous, important, but at times ephemeral and still poorly understood, medium in a wide variety of different cultural contexts. There are separate parts for each of the main geographic areas, with each of these sections arranged broadly chronologically. Coverage includes Iran and reaches as far afield as Spain and India.
A wide-ranging, illustrated exploration of the uses of stucco in Islamic architecture in the pre-modern period. Coverage includes Iran and reaches as far afield as Spain and India.
Dr Richard Piran McClary is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of York. He received his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2015. He has lectured extensively on a range of subjects related to medieval Islamic art and architecture around the world, and has conducted fieldwork in India, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia and across the Middle East. He held a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh from 2015 to 2018, examining the surviving corpus of Qarakhanid architecture in Central Asia. His most recent monograph, Mina'i Ware (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) is the first comprehensive study of polychrome overglaze painted wares, and his second monograph is Medieval Monuments of Central Asia. Qarakhanid Architecture of the 11th and 12th Centuries, (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). His first monograph was Rum Seljuq Architecture 1170-1220. The Patronage of Sultans (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). He has co-edited a volume with Andrew Peacock, entitled Turkish History and Culture in India. Identity, Art and Transregional Connections (Brill, 2020), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on the topic of medieval Islamic architecture and ceramics. He has published articles in numerous journal, including Muqarnas, Iran, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and Anatolian Studies. He has served as a trustee and the Research Director for the British Institute of Persian Studies, and is managing editor of the Journal of Islamic Art and Architecture.
