Pottery Museum

On the night of January 8th, 1780, an earthquake measuring an estimated 7.4 struck Tabriz and did not leave much standing. Death toll estimates range as high as 200,000, with 50,000 considered the more credible figure, which is the sort of detail that offers little comfort either way. Nearly every building in the city came down. What rose afterward was rebuilt with the specific intention of not doing that again.

Among the Qajar-era houses constructed in the aftermath was the Sarraflar residence, known today as Alavi House, a two-story mansion with a basement pool room and a courtyard built for a wealthy merchant family with evident faith in their own permanence. It survived long enough to outlive that faith, eventually losing its residents and gaining, in 2005, a new purpose: teaching strangers how to throw pottery on a wheel.

The museum does not deal in glass cases. Visitors get clay from Zanvar Marand village, the same white earth potters have used here for generations, and they get to ruin it themselves before anyone shows them how not to. The finished pieces, when they survive the process, emerge with the turquoise glaze that has marked Tabriz pottery since long before anyone thought to put it behind a velvet rope.

The merchant family is gone. The house remains, now in the business of letting people fail (artistically) at something old.