A LATE SASSANIAN PARCEL GILT SILVER BOWL

PERSIA, 6TH-7TH CENTURY

Details

A LATE SASSANIAN PARCEL GILT SILVER BOWL
PERSIA, 6TH-7TH CENTURY
Of long oval form slightly raised at each end, the interior worked in repouss with rows of dots forming a lozenge lattice enclosing gilt quatrefoil rosettes together with heart-motifs near the rim, the central four lozenges filled with four repouss and chased birds flanked by small pounced rosettes, silver oxidised, traces of corrosion around the rim
8in. (22.2cm.) long

Lot Essay

This bowl relates very closely to one in the Freer Gallery of Art (Gunter, Ann C. and Jett, Paul: Ancient Iranian Metalwork in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1992, no. 28, pp.174-176). It is certainly from the same workshop and possibly by the same hand. Both have a central panel with four similar birds divided by pounced rosettes. Both also have a lattice design in the rest of the field. The Sackler example is more ambitious, filled with figural designs similar to the work in the central roundel seen here, but it also shows all the rosettes and overlapping hearts which fill the lozenges in the present example, and the lozenges themselves are identically formed.

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