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Lot Essay
The word on the underside resembles "khudh" ("take") which appears to be unrecorded.
This is a very good example of a type of bowl which appears, from the number of fragmentary and complete examples to have survived, to have been very popular in 10th century Mesopotamia. Most examples have a central animal or bird on a ground of dotted or V-shaped motifs within a cusped rim. Examples are in the Keir Collection (Ernst J. Grube, Islamic Pottery of the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century in the Keir Collection, London, 1976, nos.26-30, pp.64-67 and in the al-Sabah Collection (Oliver Watson, Ceramics from Islamic Lands, London, 2004, nos.E.13 and E.14, pp.192-3) among many others. Animals found on the group show many rabbits, bulls and deer, but also camels, elephants and other more unusual creatures. These animals, as here, frequently have a strong sense of humour verging on the cartoon-like caricature. Our peacock stands (or rather, runs) in strong contrast to the heraldic stationary image of the peacock with spread tail more normally associated with this bird.
A thermoluminescence test performed by the Research Laboratory for Archaeology in Oxford, sample 581e54, is consistent with the proposed dating of this bowl.
This is a very good example of a type of bowl which appears, from the number of fragmentary and complete examples to have survived, to have been very popular in 10th century Mesopotamia. Most examples have a central animal or bird on a ground of dotted or V-shaped motifs within a cusped rim. Examples are in the Keir Collection (Ernst J. Grube, Islamic Pottery of the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century in the Keir Collection, London, 1976, nos.26-30, pp.64-67 and in the al-Sabah Collection (Oliver Watson, Ceramics from Islamic Lands, London, 2004, nos.E.13 and E.14, pp.192-3) among many others. Animals found on the group show many rabbits, bulls and deer, but also camels, elephants and other more unusual creatures. These animals, as here, frequently have a strong sense of humour verging on the cartoon-like caricature. Our peacock stands (or rather, runs) in strong contrast to the heraldic stationary image of the peacock with spread tail more normally associated with this bird.
A thermoluminescence test performed by the Research Laboratory for Archaeology in Oxford, sample 581e54, is consistent with the proposed dating of this bowl.