SYRIA, 13TH CENTURY

This is a fragment of what must have been a massive and most impressive original dish. Heavily potted, but with the unusual feature of a wavy vertical rim, the incised lines of the design are very precisely and smoothly worked. This precision continues the tradition of some of the Fatimid carved wares such as fragments in the Benaki Museum (Philon, Helen: Benaki Museum Athens: Early Islamic Ceramics, London, 1980, pl.XXXI). It uses however a technique which became more popular in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods, that of containing colours, normally green, manganese and sometimes yellow, within the incised lines and on a white ground. The colour scheme and concept was probably influenced by the Yastkand wares from Persia. And certainly the scrolling waterweed motifs on the reverse have a very obvious source in the underglaze decorated Kashan wares. The floral motifs around the pert hares on the interior relate closely to manunscript painting of the period. The two are seen together in very comparable form in an illustration to the Fables of Bidpai dating from around 1230 in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (Blochet, E.: Musulman Painting, London, 1929, pl.XX).