EGYPT, 14TH CENTURY

Details

A FRAGMENTARY MAMLUK SGRAFFITO DISH
EGYPT, 14TH CENTURY
Of rounded form on flat base, the ochre ground decorated in the centre with incised lines with brown, black and yellow glaze, with central roundel surrounded by radiating pattern of brown interlacing strapwork, the interstices with black palmettes, half-star patterns and roundels, the border with reciprocal triangles, the underside plain but for a massive incised and black glazed blazon, the border completely restored
7½in. (19.1cm.) diam.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

The scale of the blazon on the underside of this dish is remarkable - it occupies the entire area within the foot-ring. A number of other sgraffito pottery fragments have the same blazon, one in the Islamic Museum, Cairo (La Céramique Égyptienne de l'epoque musulmane, Basel, 1922, pl.142), another in the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait (LNS 964 Ca; Oliver Watson, Ceramics from Islamic Lands, the al-Sabah Collection, London, 2004, pp.413-4), one in the Keir Collection (Ernst J. Grube, Islamic Pottery of the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century in the Keir Collection, London, 1976, no.234, p.285), two in Berlin (David Alexander, Furusiyya, exhibition catalogue, volume 2, Riyadh, 1996, p.81), and further examples in the Islamic Museum in Cairo and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (L. A. Mayer, Saracenic Heraldry, Oxford, 1999 reprint, pl.XII). Only two names are directly associated with this device, Shihab al-Din b. Faraji, and Ghars al-Din Khalil (Mayer, op. cit., pls.XII.1 and pl.XLIII) but in both cases the device does not fill the entire blazon, so it is different from that found here.

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