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Lot Essay
INSCRIPTIONS:
Parts of Arabic and Persian verses: … tala al-zaman bihi … (restoration) … [nigah] kardan andar hama-yi karha … (restoration) … a-la fawq al-ghiram lana ghiram tafakhara ‘azm tara bihi al-kalam, ‘… no matter how much time passes … to consider all affairs … Verily our passion is beyond (all) passion (Our) resolution was boastful, words flew away in it …’
Robert Hillenbrand writes of a group of Kashan lustre ware which share generalised courtly representations (Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Images of Authority on Kashan Lustreware’ in James Allan (ed.), Islamic Art in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 1995, p. 167). Of these ‘courtly’ dishes, a sub-group features a central ruler surrounded by a double phalanx of courtiers, creating the effect of a scene dense with faces, as seen on our dish. Examples of dishes with this motif include a bowl formerly in the H. Havemeyer collection now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc.no.41.119.I, which is dated Jumada II, AH 607/November 1210 AD) and a dish formerly in the Rabenou collection (illustrated Hillenbrand, op.cit., fig.4). Our dish would originally have been much larger than both of those mentioned above, and is in fact notable for its remarkable size. A dish of similar proportions recently sold in these Rooms, 27 October 2022, lot 39.
A tile similarly decorated with a multitude of figures, all wearing robes of different patterns, is in the Keir Collection, now on view at the Dallas Museum of Art (published Ernst J. Grube, Islamic Pottery of the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century in the Keir Collection, Oxford, 1976, no.183, p.232 and dated to the 12th-13th century). Like our dish, Grube identifies that the tile must have been part of a representation of a court scene but notes that as on our dish, the figures are of curiously unequal sizes, and not facing in one direction but in different ones. The original background of our tile and the Keir dish is also closely related with a blanket of tight scrolls and fleshy leaves – ours with the addition of occasional plump birds. In his essay on that tile, Grube discusses that whilst usually the royal figure would form the centre of the composition, examples are known where this is not the case. In manuscript illumination, for example he cites the frontispiece of the Kitab al-Diriyaq in Vienna is one such exception where a prince – Badr al-Din Lu’lu’ – is seated to the left with various figures before him (Grube, op.cit., p.250). It is possible that our tile had a similar scheme – with the largest grandest figure on the right facing his subjects.
Parts of Arabic and Persian verses: … tala al-zaman bihi … (restoration) … [nigah] kardan andar hama-yi karha … (restoration) … a-la fawq al-ghiram lana ghiram tafakhara ‘azm tara bihi al-kalam, ‘… no matter how much time passes … to consider all affairs … Verily our passion is beyond (all) passion (Our) resolution was boastful, words flew away in it …’
Robert Hillenbrand writes of a group of Kashan lustre ware which share generalised courtly representations (Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Images of Authority on Kashan Lustreware’ in James Allan (ed.), Islamic Art in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 1995, p. 167). Of these ‘courtly’ dishes, a sub-group features a central ruler surrounded by a double phalanx of courtiers, creating the effect of a scene dense with faces, as seen on our dish. Examples of dishes with this motif include a bowl formerly in the H. Havemeyer collection now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc.no.41.119.I, which is dated Jumada II, AH 607/November 1210 AD) and a dish formerly in the Rabenou collection (illustrated Hillenbrand, op.cit., fig.4). Our dish would originally have been much larger than both of those mentioned above, and is in fact notable for its remarkable size. A dish of similar proportions recently sold in these Rooms, 27 October 2022, lot 39.
A tile similarly decorated with a multitude of figures, all wearing robes of different patterns, is in the Keir Collection, now on view at the Dallas Museum of Art (published Ernst J. Grube, Islamic Pottery of the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century in the Keir Collection, Oxford, 1976, no.183, p.232 and dated to the 12th-13th century). Like our dish, Grube identifies that the tile must have been part of a representation of a court scene but notes that as on our dish, the figures are of curiously unequal sizes, and not facing in one direction but in different ones. The original background of our tile and the Keir dish is also closely related with a blanket of tight scrolls and fleshy leaves – ours with the addition of occasional plump birds. In his essay on that tile, Grube discusses that whilst usually the royal figure would form the centre of the composition, examples are known where this is not the case. In manuscript illumination, for example he cites the frontispiece of the Kitab al-Diriyaq in Vienna is one such exception where a prince – Badr al-Din Lu’lu’ – is seated to the left with various figures before him (Grube, op.cit., p.250). It is possible that our tile had a similar scheme – with the largest grandest figure on the right facing his subjects.