A SAFAVID ENGRAVED BRASS TORCH STAND
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A SAFAVID ENGRAVED BRASS TORCH STAND

IRAN, CIRCA 1560

Details
A SAFAVID ENGRAVED BRASS TORCH STAND
IRAN, CIRCA 1560
Of faceted columnar form on flaring foot with upper cylindrical band, the main band with very elegant interlaced arabesques and flowering vine around a meandering cusped band of elegant nasta'liq inscription, a similar band of nasta'liq around the mouth between meandering vine and arabeqsue bands, multiple interlaced arabesque and linked palmette bands around the foot, all on a cross-hatched ground filled with black composition, a near contemporaneous Armenian inscription within a hatched cartouche around the rim, foot drilled, very slightly rubbed
15 in. (37.9 cm.) high
Provenance
Edmond Foulc Collection, Nimes (label and script on underside)
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

The inscription in zigzags around the body comprises the beginning of a mystical ode by Ahli Torshizi which translates:
The Lamp of the lucid I see brightened by Your face
All those who have a soul I see their souls turned towards You
You are the desired by the world; may not one hair fall from Your Head
For I see the World - a thread of a single hair from Your Head.


This is followed by a couplet by Amir Khosraw Dehlavi:
There is no moment in which my soul is not burning because of love for you.
What breast does not burn from that artful [amorous glance]?


The band around the mouth contains a verse from the Bustan of Sa'di which translates:
I remember one night my eyelids wouldn't close
I heard the butterfly tell the candle
I am striken with love, if I burn 'tis but right
But you, why do you weep, why burn yourself out?


The Armenian inscription on the rim transcribes: Eyrapet vordi Baba min t'ivn RHE (Baba son of Hayrapet, in the year 1077 (c. 1629 AD)).

The same verse by Ahli Torshizi, but without the last two lines from Amir Khusraw Dehlavi is on a torchstand in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is 'a hymn to God, whose radiance is the source of the light shining from the lamps of the Sufis' (A. S. Melikian Chirvani, Islamic Metalwork from the Iranian World, 8th-18th centuries, London, 1982, no.148, p.327). The verse from the Bustan of Sa'di is on another torchstand also in the same museum (Melikian Chirvani op.cit, no.137, p.309)

The Mash'al or pillar candlestick/torchstand is a form that appears to have come to Iran from India. The earliest dated example of the form is in the Imam Reza Shrine Museum in Mashhad (Melikian Chirvani, op. cit., p.263; illustrated in Mark Zebrowski, Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India, London, 1997, pls.130-1, pp.115, 117-8). Its inscriptions make it clear that it was made by the Fakir master Da'ud, foundryman, in Lahore, 14 October 1539, designed by Iskandar b. Shukrullah in India.

The present example is very similar indeed to the one that is to date the earliest published example with a clear Western Iranian origin. In the collection of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad, that example bears a date added after the original manufacture, when it was donated to the shrine at Samarra in 1561-2AD (Melikian-Chirvani, op.cit, pp.264-5 incl. fig.65). The decoration as well as the form of the present example is very close indeed, the only major difference in the main register being that the central band there is formed of interlaced vine rather than the inscriptions found here. The other difference appears to be that the present torchstand is worked on a cross-hatched ground rather than the single-hatched ground of the Baghdad example. This feature is an earlier feature found on Timurid metalwork, but which was discarded in favour of single-hatching by the reign of Shah Abbas in the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

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