Lot Essay
There is a saucer dish in the Louvre Museum precisely similar in material, shape and decoration (Barbet de Jouy, no.E175 and L'Islam, no.673, p.282). Jade carvings of Timurid Iran and Transoxiana are rare, and it is still not known where in the Timurid domains they were made although Samarkand on present evidence seems most likely. Their effect depends on the carved form, but a very few have added decoration of incised designs such as the dark green jade bowl in the Louvre with incised decoration of poeny scrolls in the Chinese manner (Timur, no.129, p.226).
The two saucer dishes with their incised designs belong to this group and probably date from the closing years of Timurid rule in Iran. The trefoil scroll is similar to that seen in the border on the neck of the brass jug made for Sultan Hasan Mirza Baiqara in 1498 (Timur, no.151, p.273). The somewhat careless handling of the paired lines encircling the central roundel as well as the grooved line defining the cavetto is a known feature of Timurid jade carvings.
The faint inscription on the outside of the cavetto reading 'Babur ibn 'Umar Shaykh' is rendered in a fine thuluth script and executed with the diamond point. The date in figures is either 915 or 918. While it is true that dedicatiry ownership inscriptions on Timurid and Mughal jade carvings are normally executed on the wheel and therefore fairly deeply incised, there are examples of Chinese porcelain reaching India in the fifteenth century and later which are sometimes so incised with the owner's name.
The possible circumstances of its acquisition by Babur may explain the nature of the inscription. The years from 914 to 924 are missing in Babur's memoirs (Babur-nama) and have to be reconstructed from other sources. In 915 Babur was mainly on his capital, Kabul, but in 917 he made his third and last attempt on the city of Samarkand which he succeeded in capturing from the Uzbeks. He stayed there into early 918 when he was forced to retire. It may be that in these eight months in Samarkand he acquired the jade saucer from what may have been the jade carving centre of the Timurid empire.
The Babur-nama in English translated by A.S.Beveridge, London 1922 Barbet de Jouy,H.: Galerie d'Apollon, Notice des Gemmes et Joyaux, Paris 1867
L'Islam dans les Collections Nationales, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1977
Timur and the Princely Vision - Persian art and culture in the fifteenth century, Washington D.C. 1989
The two saucer dishes with their incised designs belong to this group and probably date from the closing years of Timurid rule in Iran. The trefoil scroll is similar to that seen in the border on the neck of the brass jug made for Sultan Hasan Mirza Baiqara in 1498 (Timur, no.151, p.273). The somewhat careless handling of the paired lines encircling the central roundel as well as the grooved line defining the cavetto is a known feature of Timurid jade carvings.
The faint inscription on the outside of the cavetto reading 'Babur ibn 'Umar Shaykh' is rendered in a fine thuluth script and executed with the diamond point. The date in figures is either 915 or 918. While it is true that dedicatiry ownership inscriptions on Timurid and Mughal jade carvings are normally executed on the wheel and therefore fairly deeply incised, there are examples of Chinese porcelain reaching India in the fifteenth century and later which are sometimes so incised with the owner's name.
The possible circumstances of its acquisition by Babur may explain the nature of the inscription. The years from 914 to 924 are missing in Babur's memoirs (Babur-nama) and have to be reconstructed from other sources. In 915 Babur was mainly on his capital, Kabul, but in 917 he made his third and last attempt on the city of Samarkand which he succeeded in capturing from the Uzbeks. He stayed there into early 918 when he was forced to retire. It may be that in these eight months in Samarkand he acquired the jade saucer from what may have been the jade carving centre of the Timurid empire.
The Babur-nama in English translated by A.S.Beveridge, London 1922 Barbet de Jouy,H.: Galerie d'Apollon, Notice des Gemmes et Joyaux, Paris 1867
L'Islam dans les Collections Nationales, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1977
Timur and the Princely Vision - Persian art and culture in the fifteenth century, Washington D.C. 1989