Edition: U.S. / Global

ANTIQUES; Seeking the Roots Of Italy's Lustrous Majolica

By LISA HAMMEL; Lisa Hammel writes frequently on the visual arts for The Times.
Published: September 3, 1989

So popular is the current exhibition of Italian majolica at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that when this large show closes on Oct. 1 it will be pared down somewhat (from 500 to 400 pieces) and then reopened on Nov. 2, to run well into the winter.

Confronted with an art that bloomed, however briefly, with genius and exuberance, one wonders where it came from. What was the model for this brilliant and highly decorated 16th-century Italian earthenware? What were the references for the patterning, geometric complexities, strong rhythms and daring juxtapositions that appeared on such once-homely items as bowls, plates and pitchers?

''There is a very strong relation between majolica and Islamic pottery,'' said Laurence Kenner, curator of the Metropolitan's Robert Lehman collection, from which all the majolica on exhbition is drawn. ''It seems that the major impetus in Italy for converting from workaday pottery to a higher art was the Islamic pottery.''

This work from the Middle East affected virtually every aspect of majolica. The shapes of the Italian ware were taken directly from the repertory of Islamic ceramics, metalwork and glass, Mr. Kenner pointed out, and the rich, faintly shimmering surface of lusterware eventually became a hallmark of majolica.

''Although majolica became completely Italianized,'' Mr. Kenner said, ''it's clear that the point of departure was the energy and vivacity of Islamic pottery.''

Islamic pottery began to flower in the Middle East in the ninth century. On first acquaintance, it presents itself as a gorgeous and confusing complexity of detail. One way to become familar with it is to focus on the coherent presentation in the Metropolitan's Nishapur gallery, which is filled with pottery that reflects the basic aspects of all Islamic ceramics.

Nishapur was a great provincial center in northeastern Iran at the time when Baghdad to the west was the capital of an Islamic empire that ranged from Spain to central Asia. Some scholars believe that this city, along with Samarkand in the nearby region of Transoxiana, made its major contribution to the Islamic arts through its pottery. The ceramics in this gallery are contemporary with Nishapur's palmy days of economic, artistic and intellectual growth.

The pottery of Islam did not become distinctively separate from what had gone before it until the ninth century, said Marilyn Jenkins, a curator of Islamic art at the museum.

At first, the conquering Moslems (Islam dates from A. D. 622) simply continued to make what was already being fabricated in the territories they captured. Then they began adapting, Ms. Jenkins said, changing certain elements to suit needs or tastes and building on a base of such older existing traditions as the Greco-Roman, with its use of geometric motifs, human and animal figures and decorative plant forms. Or they may have drawn on Sasanian (earlier Persian) influences in the flattening and stylization of these forms, Ms. Jenkins said. Or they may very likely have been imitating popular Tang Dynasty wares, which China was briskly exploiting.

When Islamic potters discovered more effective techniques for decorating their work, they were able to become more creative. They took existing design elements, like geometric patterns, and extended and compounded them. They transformed plant and flower forms into the intricate, flowing patterns of the Islamic arabesque. They flattened or stylized or idealized figural representation. And out of their own culture they invented something that had not existed before: calligraphy as the sole decoration on a surface, which they carried to inspired heights.

These four basic design types - geometric, arabesque, calligraphic and figural - contrast strongly with one another but have in common their concentration on surface decoration.

A style of calligraphic design that was peculiar to Nishapur and Samarkand involved bold Kusic script with its strong verticals and its elaborated tips circling the rim of a bowl or plate. Daniel Walker, the curator in charge of Islamic art at the museum, characterized these works as ''extraordinary abstractions,'' which may account for their appeal to the modern eye. Curiously, at the same time that these pieces are stylistically abstract, they are verbally concrete. They convey aphoristic and hopeful messages that reflected the values of the rising middle class of the time.

''Planning before work protects you from regret,'' says the inscription on one of the bowls. ''Knowledge is the most noble of noble qualities, and manly virtue is the most praiseworthy of pedigrees,'' says another.

The geometric designs on some early Nishapur pottery may look a little crude by contemporary standards. But the patterns contain intricacies and bold juxtapositions that clearly fed the High Renaissance Italian imagination and influenced the way we design today.

Another Islamic design, arabesques (a rabeschi, as the Italian majolica potters called the style), almost undoubtedly was developed out of an extension of Greco-Roman plant and flower motifs. Arabesques are patterns based on flowing, rhythmic and often interlaced alternations and oppositions of leaf, stem and blossom. So intriguing is this type of design that it has shown up over time and in many places on everything from ceramics to carpets to architectural detail.

Figural representation is not proscribed by the Koran as many people believe, Ms. Jenkins said. One particular style of figures found only in Nishapur pottery is an mystery. Distinctive depictions of people at various activities from fighting to drinking to sitting are bold and caricaturelike. In the crowded compositions, generally on a bright yellow background, birds and plants surround the figures, often in eccentric arrangements.

These pieces are so strange they are magnetic. Who made them? What do the figures represent? Who or what were they made for? And how did they reflect life and philosophy in the once-thriving, long-gone city of Nishapur, whose artistic inventions still echo in our own contemporary designs?

Auctions of Islamic pottery are held about twice a year at Sotheby's in New York. Most often coming up for sale is Persian (Iranian) pottery of the 9th to 14th centuries, but there is not much work from Syria, Egypt or Iraq.

Richard Keresey, head of the department of antiquities and Islamic art at Sotheby's, said that ''Islamic pottery is often in a highly repaired and restored condition, and people who collect it expect that.''

Prices usually range from about $500 to $3,000, Mr. Keresey said. A sale on June 23 at the auction house offered work of exceptional quality, and prices there ranged from $6,000 to $17,000. The record price for Islamic pottery at auction was $54,000, paid in 1974 for a mina'i Persian work, Mr. Keresey reported. Mina'i refers to a ware with a greatly extended color palette and, generally, finely painted figures.

Photo of two Islamic earthenware bowls from the 10th century A.D. on view at the Metropolitan