IRAN, 6TH OR 7TH CENTURY

Richard Ettinghausen observed in the intriguing, highly abstracted leaf design that constitutes the body of these unusual vases "an ambiguity between design and delimitations" and cited it as a precursor to the famous 'bevelled' style of early Islamic ornament first attested at Samarra (Unpublished comments, 1964, Freer Gallery of Art's registrar's object file 64.3 and Richard Ettinghausen, "Medieval Islamic Objects of Unusual Shapes and Decorations in the Metropolitan Museum of Art", Islamic Archaeological Studies 1, 1978 [1982], p. 31, both as cited in Ann C. Gunter and Paul Jett, Ancient Iranian Metalwork in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 1992, pp. 185-7). This rare motif is also present on a pair of Sasanian vases formerly owned by Khalil Rabenou and now split between the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc.no. 62.78.2) and the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington D.C. (acc.no. F1964.3).

The silver vase, among the most iconic Sasanian vessels, shows a remarkable consistency in shape over the centuries during which it was produced. Here, the vases display the pear-shaped body and repoussé decoration on a gilded ground typical of the Sasanian style, but, unusually, no moulding separates the neck and body, and the vessel does not have a flat, circular base, instead having a rounded base (op.cit., p. 28). In these latter characteristics, it appears closer to contemporaneous glass vessels, with which it shares the unusual feature of a hole at the base. (St John Simpson, "From Mesopotamia to Merv: reconstructing patterns of consumption in Sasanian households", in Timothy Potts, Michael Roaf and Diana Stein (eds.), Culture through Objects: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of P.R.S. Moorey, Oxford: Griffith Institute, 2003, pp. 363-5, fig. 5).

The partial inscription in Middle Persian on the rim of one of the bottles appears to be the weight of one or both of the bottles, and matches the orthography of late 6th and 7th century Sasanian inscriptions (Christopher J. Brunner, "Middle Persian Inscriptions on Sasanian Silverware, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal 9, 1974, p. 109). It has been suggested that such inscriptions were part of registration for tax purposes, either during the reign of the reformer Kawad I (r.499-531), or his successors Khusraw I and II (r.531-79 and 591-628; op.cit., p. 109).