IRAN, 13TH CENTURY

Underglaze-painted vessels such as the present lot were contemporary with Kashan lustre ware. Often the decoration was done with cobalt-blue and black pigments - the former was quite volatile with a tendency to run, while the latter was thick and viscous enough that it could be incised. There are three examples of bowls decorated with this technique in the Khalili collection, of which one (cat.no. 214) is dated AH 611 / 1214 AD (Ernst J. Grube, “Iranian stone-paste pottery of the Saljuq period”, in Cobalt and Lustre: the First Centuries of Islamic Pottery, London, 1994, pp.197-99, cat.nos.213-15).

The distinctive form of this ewer, with its moulded cockerel’s head, is not uncommon in medieval Iranian pottery. Though they have a variety of different handle designs and body shapes, the heads are broadly homogenous across the group. The model may have been Sassanian metalwork or Tang Dynasty phoenix-head ewers, though an indigenous tradition can also not be ruled out (Oliver Watson, Ceramics of Iran, London, 2020, p.178, cat.no. 91). Other examples of this form with underglaze painting include two examples decorated only with horizontal stripes in the Sarikhani collection (Oliver Watson, op.cit., p.297, cat.no.151) and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (acc.no.19.68.2). A further example was sold by Bonhams London, 24 April 2018, lot 172.