A QAJAR PAPIER MACHÉ POLYCHROME LACQUER PENCASE (QALAMDAN)

SIGNED NAJAF 'ALI, IRAN, MID 19TH CENTURY

Details

A QAJAR PAPIER MACHÉ POLYCHROME LACQUER PENCASE (QALAMDAN)
SIGNED NAJAF 'ALI, IRAN, MID 19TH CENTURY
With rounded edges and sliding tray, the top with a portrait of a lady in Mughal dress holding a fan, the sides each with portraits of men and women in gold frames interspersed with wide hunting scenes in a European landscape, the base and sides of the tray with scrolling gold arabesques on red ground, signed ya Shah-i Najaf in red nasta'liq on the upper right hand corner of the top
9¼in. (23.4cm.) long

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Lot Essay

This pencase is very closely related to a further example signed ya Shah-i Najaf' and dated AH1259/1843-44 AD in a private collection which was exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Mary McWilliams and David J. Roxburgh, Traces of the Calligrapher: Islamic Calligraphy in Practice, c. 1600-1900, New Haven, 2007, fig. 44, p. 62). Another example with a very similar vertical composition of an Indian lady signed like our pencase and dated AH 1270/1853-54 AD is in the Khalili Collection (Nasser D. Khalili, B.W. Robinson and Tim Stanley, Lacquer of the Islamic Lands, Part Two, London, 1996, cat.226, pp.31-33).

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