Princeton UP Ideas Podcast · New Books Network

Margaret S. Graves, "Invisible Hands: Fabrication, Forgery, and the Art of Islamic Ceramics" (Princeton UP, 2026)

·58 min·5 clips

Thermoluminescence tests revealed that prized Islamic ceramics in major collections were actually fired in the modern era.

Forgery is not the whole story. The conversation moves Islamic ceramics away from a plain fraud account and toward the skills, markets, and material choices behind altered objects. The moral frame still matters. Much collecting literature, as the excerpt describes it, has treated fabricated ceramics as wrongdoing. The book asks what shows up when that judgment sits beside evidence of technical expertise. The book stays close to the objects. Its third chapter looks at how pieces were actually remade, with so many examples that the speaker says she had to cut back the data to keep the chapter readable. Three categories organize the discussion. Bricolage is the most common practice: fragments from multiple old objects, and sometimes newly made pieces, are joined into a ceramic whole that can sell. The term earns its keep. It lets the discussion talk about fabrication without turning every intervention into deception, even though true forgery is still part of the picture. Skin swaps are another route. The excerpt does not spell them out, but placing them beside bricolage and true forgery points to a range of remaking techniques, not one single trick. The market matters too. The speaker describes fabrication as a practical direction for trained skills under the conditions created by the market in Islamic ceramics. That changes the archive. Objects once treated mostly as damaged evidence can also show labor, skill, and market pressure. Museums are still in the mix. Near the end, the speaker says conversations with museum colleagues matter because museums are where many viewers meet Islamic art. The tone is cooperative, not scolding. The book wants difficult subjects to be talkable while still working with the people and collections that carry the field. Instead of asking only whether an object is fraudulent, it asks how fabricated ceramics were made, why those techniques spread, and what those hidden makers can teach us.

As heard by us

A careful rethink of forgery, repair, and skill in Islamic ceramics.

Margaret S. Graves makes a disciplined case for reading Islamic ceramics through repair, imitation, reuse, and the market pressures around them.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a serious rethink of forgery and repair, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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