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Lot Essay
These panels, with their overall designs of scrolling leafy vine, often issuing from stylised vases, relate very closely to a group of smaller ivories discussed by Henri Stern ("Quelques oevres sculptées en bois, os et ivoire de style Omayyade", Ars Orientalis, I, 1954, pp.119-131). Stern shows a number of small pieces whose decoration is almost identical, executed in ivory, bone and a single ebony example, which he relates to larger panels in the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, and to a wooden door at Qaryatayn, north east of Damascus, both of which were undoubtedly made during thje Umayyad period. Strzygowski had already noted the very close similarities of the vine scrolls to those of the façade of the Umayyad palace at Mshatta; the designs are also very close to the central roundels of a pair of doors from a tomb near Baghdad in the Benaki Museum (Piotrovsky, Mikhail B. and Vrieze, John (eds.): Earthly Beauty, Heavenly Art, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, 1999, no.105, p.153).
Almost all the pieces published by Stern are not of ivory. In Kühnel's major work on this material he only shows eight ivory works of art which can be dated to the early Umayyad period. These are three small covered pots, in the Islamic Museum, Berlin, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and in the al-Sabah collection; a smaller more unusual pot in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; a comb in Cologne; and three fragmentary panels in Berlin and the Benaki Museum, Athens (Kuhnel, Ernst: Die Islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen VIII-XIII Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1971, plates I-IV). The larger of the panels in Berlin is very similar indeed to the present main panel with the main difference being that it is pierced with drilled holes throughout the design. The size is 19.5 x 14.5cm., the design has three pairs of leaves across the width; each five-lobed leaf is carved with lines radiating from the centre in which there is a pronounced roundel. In the two corners that have survived in the Berlin panel larger holes are drilled, very similar to those on the present panel, and in both cases larger than the holes around the edge. It is not possible to see if the leaves in Berlin rise from a vase; the centre of the lower edge no longer survives.
Kühnel remarks on the size of the Berlin panel and cannot suggest what item of furniture it embellished. The panels in the present lot do not help resolve the question. Neither the short nor the long sides of the triangular panels match the length of the shorter side of the large panel. The vine which grows out of one of the 45 degree corners of each indicates that they somehow were spandrels. How the circular panel fitted with them is also very unclear.
Almost all the pieces published by Stern are not of ivory. In Kühnel's major work on this material he only shows eight ivory works of art which can be dated to the early Umayyad period. These are three small covered pots, in the Islamic Museum, Berlin, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and in the al-Sabah collection; a smaller more unusual pot in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; a comb in Cologne; and three fragmentary panels in Berlin and the Benaki Museum, Athens (Kuhnel, Ernst: Die Islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen VIII-XIII Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1971, plates I-IV). The larger of the panels in Berlin is very similar indeed to the present main panel with the main difference being that it is pierced with drilled holes throughout the design. The size is 19.5 x 14.5cm., the design has three pairs of leaves across the width; each five-lobed leaf is carved with lines radiating from the centre in which there is a pronounced roundel. In the two corners that have survived in the Berlin panel larger holes are drilled, very similar to those on the present panel, and in both cases larger than the holes around the edge. It is not possible to see if the leaves in Berlin rise from a vase; the centre of the lower edge no longer survives.
Kühnel remarks on the size of the Berlin panel and cannot suggest what item of furniture it embellished. The panels in the present lot do not help resolve the question. Neither the short nor the long sides of the triangular panels match the length of the shorter side of the large panel. The vine which grows out of one of the 45 degree corners of each indicates that they somehow were spandrels. How the circular panel fitted with them is also very unclear.