DescriptionThis thesis focuses on Nīshāpūr buff ware, one of the twelve types of Nishapur pottery (9th-10th century A.D.) excavated from the Nīshāpūr site from 1937-1940 and first identified and analyzed by Charles K. Wilkinson. Nīshāpūr buff ware features enigmatic images of birds, quadrupeds, and humans rendered in a unique combination of yellow, green, black, and sometimes red colors. While these vessels in museum collections, auction catalogues, and scholarly publications feature a variety of images and are plentiful, almost the entire corpus of these materials has no provenance and is heavily restored, consequently creating a challenge in extrapolating information. This thesis hopes to offer new insight into the history of the collection and postexcavation of Nīshāpūr figural buff ware in museums around the world through a comparative study of quantity, quality, and aesthetics that has great potential to heighten our understanding of the production of ceramics in that era. Furthermore, juxtaposing provenanced and unprovenanced Nīshāpūr figural buff ware could reveal issues concerning authenticity, such as the issues of fakes and forgeries as well as the role of heavy restoration in scholarly interpretation.