Perso-Arabic script on Pakistani Vessel. Urdu?

Hi Chrysalis,

Thank you so very much for this translation!!!! You will need to find a third party host to upload the edited picture to .... then you can load it via the software on this thread .... or you can send it to me and I can post it(disregard the brackets and fill in @ for at & . for dot:

Now to answer your questions. First of all why am I interested in what it says?

You would think I would have been satisfied alone with the beautiful blend of flora & calligraphy in hues of cobalt & copper oxides. However curiosity killed the cat & there's always a chance of a tidbit of provenance/identification when so much script is present.

Those words simple say 'school of' in the arabic script. Why would they use an english phrase? might not be that old after all. Its not very common to mix english words in classical poetry. Strange.

I don't think so strange. These pots were almost always commissioned by travellers, mostly Britishers. They saw the beautiful calligraphy on the tombs & monuments and they wanted a momento of similar artistic content. Sometimes they would write down what they wanted in english - to have it translated & written into Perso-Arabic script, sometimes they wanted poetry, sometimes Quran passages, sometimes they left it up to kashigar who would then have to pass it onto the calligrapher. 

Unfortunately not alot is written or known about early years of this glazed ornamental pottery, an industry that really only came to be as function of the Great Exhibition of 1851, subsequent exhibitions & the onset of the British Raj.

Oh sure, the glazed tile industries flourished in Multan & Sindh, in particular, for centuries before - but the ornamental surahis & plates, & bowls etc. were mostly a newer creation(post 1851) made for export to London etc. or for those tourists who wished a memory of the subcontinent ... and in the process ressurected the glazing technique which had been somewhat dormant for several decades.