IRAN, 8TH/9TH CENTURY

Details

AN EARLY ISLAMIC BRONZE DOUBLE-SPOUTED EWER
Iran, 8th/9th century
With inverted drop shaped fluted body on short spreading foot narrowing above to the waisted fluted neck with slightly flaring cylindrical mouth, the flat handle linking the shoulder and spreading into the mouth lip in the form of two birds' heads, two parallel tubular spouts rising from the shoulder, the shoulder cast with a band of palmettes alternating with lobed moitfs, a band of lobes below and fluting above, the palmettes continuing onto the base of each spout with a scrolling leaf, ascending arabesques rising up the handle to the large pomegranate thumbpiece, slight repairs to lower body, brown patination
12 3/8in. (31.5cm.) high

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Lot Essay

Double spouted ewers seem to be a very short lived fashion in Persia just after the Sassanian period. They are mostly plain or with very simple decoration such as one in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (Pope, Arthur Upham: A Survey of Persian Art, Oxford, 1938, pl.244). The fashion also spread to glass vessels. In general form the present vessel is very similar to the example in the Hermitage, particularly in the form of the body, neck and mouth. What sets it apart from all others of the group is the very strong band of palmettes decorating the shoulder. In style this again harks straight back to the Sasanian and even Achaemenid periods, the palmettes of this style being frequently found as a shallow relief border in stone carving and occasionally in metal (Pope, op.cit, pls.171 and 222 for example).

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