AYYUBID SYRIA, LATE 12TH/EARLY 13TH CENTURY

The use of figural decoration rendered in polychrome enamel is characteristic of the Syrian glasswork of the 12th and 13th centuries (Watson, 2001, p.341). For a fine example from this period employing Christian imagery, see a spectacular Syrian bottle dated to the mid-13th century in the Furussiya Arts Foundation, Vaduz, Liechtenstein and published in Carboni & Whitehouse, 2001, pp.242-243, cat. 121. The decoration of this comparable bottle depicts a Christian church and a charming vignette of two monks picking dates from a palm tree. The imagery found in our lot is possibly part of a similar scene showing the agricultural endeavours of Syrian monasteries, activities which ‘influenced and permeated the prevalent Muslim environment’ in the Ayyubid period (Carboni & Whitehouse, 2001, p.245).