QAJAR IRAN, LATE 18TH OR EARLY 19TH CENTURY

This impressive five-piece cuirass is part of a small group of cuirasses attributable to late 18th or early 19th century Iran. It can be distinguished from the more conventional four-piece body armour by its form-fitting shape, leaving no gaps between plates, and the use of hinges rather than straps to connect the plates. Each of the surviving five-piece cuirasses is a masterpiece of metalwork, extensively overlaid with gold in a range of decorative motifs and fine calligraphy. The armours may be attributed to a single workshop due to the virtually identical construction and significant overlap in decorative programmes, especially the distinctive use of grapevine motifs (Filiz Çakır Phillip, ‘Chahar Ayna: Form, Function, and Decoration of an Enigmatic Iranian Armour’ in Melanie Gibson and Gwenaëlle Fellinger (eds), Revealing the Unseen: New Perspectives on Qajar Art, London: Gingko Library, 2021). An early example, dated AH 1177⁄1763-64 AD and inscribed ‘written by Muhammad Mahdi’ (raqam-i muhammad mahdi), is in a private collection (Phillip, op.cit., p.166), while one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (48.91.1) is dated AH 1197⁄1782-83 AD (David G. Alexander, Islamic Arms and Armor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015, p.59). A cuirass inscribed with the name of Fath ‘Ali Shah Qajar and the date AH 1224⁄1809-10 AD is in the Wallace Collection, London (OA1572; Thom Richardson and Paula Turner (eds.), The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Arms and Armour from Asia, Africa and the Ottoman World, London, 2026, pp.286-7). Fath ‘Ali Shah’s association with cuirasses of this form goes beyond the Wallace Collection example, however, as in 1812 he gifted another finely decorated cuirass of this type to King George III (Royal Collection, Windsor RCIN 62629).