Scientists led by the Universitat Politècnica de Barcelona and the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, have revealed the chemical reactions in nanoparticles that created a unique, shimmering effect in the painting on ninth-century Islamic ceramics. The results are published in Science Advances.

Many centuries before the rise of nanotechnology, ninth-century Abbasid potters were producing ceramics with striking colors (golden, red, brown or yellow) and a metallic appearance resulting from nanoparticles. This technology, which created the iridescent effect, emerged in the Near East during the Abbasid period and subsequently spread across the Islamic world.

“Today we still find it very difficult to reproduce the effects they did in the ninth century, so we wanted to find out what chemical transformation the paint applied to the ceramics went through to create such effects,” explains Trinitat Pradell, professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Barcelona and co-corresponding author of the publication.