EGYPT, 11TH CENTURY

This bowl belongs to a small group of lustre painted pottery bowls which share the same characteristics. They are all of relatively small size, with rounded bodies painted in a dark lustre. The outside of each shares the same design as seen here, with its roundels each containing a central dot on a ground of dot and dash motifs. Those of the group which contain figural devices all have the interstices filled with cusped edged panels containing rows of alternating larger and smaller dots, as seen here. Solid areas of lustre are decorated with thin white scrolls. A good selection of these is in the Benaki Museum, Athens (Philon, Helen: Benaki Museum, Athens: Early Islamic Ceramics, London, 1980, figs.571, 572, 574 and 575, pp.256-258). All these pieces were found in Egypt. Archaeological sites have also revealed other fragments from the group: at Apamea (Rogers, J. Michael: 'Apamaea: The Mediaeval Pottery. Preliminary Report', Colloque Apamée de Syrie, Bilan de Recherches Archéologiques, 1969-71, Bruxelles, 1972, pp.253-70, esp. pl.XCIII,1), at Antioch (Waagé, O.: Antioch on the Orontes IV, Part One, Ceramics and Islamic Coins, Princeton, 1948, fig.49, nos.1-7), and at Fustat (Baghat, Aly and Massoul, Felix: La Céramique Musulmane de l'Egypte, Cairo, 1930).
This distribution shows that the type was known all over the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean. No examples however appear to have been found either at Damascus or Raqqa, making it less probable that they were the place of manufacture. Egypt certainly seems the most likely; not only does the figural painting relate closely to other known Egyptian Fatimid lustre wares, but also the largest number of surviving fragments are of Egyptian provenance.