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Lot Essay
The back of base stamped with the Japanese seal mark "Yoshio", the artist name for the stand maker Kichizô Inagaki (1876-1951).
This fragmentary fish inlay is of exceptional quality and was created by a master craftsman as part of a pool or marsh scene with aquatic plants, ducks and other fish, which might have adorned the walls of one of the royal palaces at Amarna. The especially vitreous quality of the glaze covering gives the fish a realistically underwater appearance. As Dr Peter Lacovara writes in Excavating Egypt: Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, Michael C. Carlos Museum, Atlanta, 2005, p. 196, "To achieve the vibrant colors so fashionable at Amarna, the mineral oxides of copper (blue-green), cobalt (blue, violet), lead antimonite (yellow, light green), iron (red, black, green), manganese (black, purple), and titanium (white) were all employed. Many of these pigments were rare and had to be imported; some were never used after this period."
The tilapia, which carried her eggs in her mouth until they hatched, was connected with regeneration and resurrection, an idea which would have contributed to its popularity in the 18th Dynasty, especially so at Amarna.
The fish fragments in the Petrie Museum were excavated at Amarna by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1891. Apart from a similar but less complete fish loaned to the Gifts of the Nile exhibition (F. D. Friedman (ed.), Gifts of the Nile: Ancient Egyptian Faience, London, 1998, no. 110), this fragment is the finest example known.
This fragmentary fish inlay is of exceptional quality and was created by a master craftsman as part of a pool or marsh scene with aquatic plants, ducks and other fish, which might have adorned the walls of one of the royal palaces at Amarna. The especially vitreous quality of the glaze covering gives the fish a realistically underwater appearance. As Dr Peter Lacovara writes in Excavating Egypt: Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, Michael C. Carlos Museum, Atlanta, 2005, p. 196, "To achieve the vibrant colors so fashionable at Amarna, the mineral oxides of copper (blue-green), cobalt (blue, violet), lead antimonite (yellow, light green), iron (red, black, green), manganese (black, purple), and titanium (white) were all employed. Many of these pigments were rare and had to be imported; some were never used after this period."
The tilapia, which carried her eggs in her mouth until they hatched, was connected with regeneration and resurrection, an idea which would have contributed to its popularity in the 18th Dynasty, especially so at Amarna.
The fish fragments in the Petrie Museum were excavated at Amarna by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1891. Apart from a similar but less complete fish loaned to the Gifts of the Nile exhibition (F. D. Friedman (ed.), Gifts of the Nile: Ancient Egyptian Faience, London, 1998, no. 110), this fragment is the finest example known.