NORTH EAST IRAN, 12TH CENTURY

When sold in Paris this lot was catalogued as Fatimid, presumably at least partly because of its Egyptian provenance. Very similar pieces have appeared on the market with every indication of a Khorassani provenance (Dahncke, Monica: Frühislamische Bronze-Öllampen und ihre Typologie, Bumiller collection vol.2, Bamberg, 1992, nos.141a and b, pp.165-8). Another example is in the L A Mayer Memorial Museum, Jerusalem (Baer, Eva: Metalwork in Medieval Islamic Art, New York ,1983, pl.20, while a later example is in the Keir Collection, engraved with designs which have to be from Khorassan, and which was purchased in Iran (Fehérvári, Geza: Islamic Metalwork of the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century in the Keir Collection, London, 1978, no.108, p.88 and pl.36b). Of these, the closest similarity however is with that in Jerusalem.