PROBABLY SAMARKAND, CENTRAL ASIA, 10TH CENTURY

Details

A SAMANID CONICAL POTTERY BOWL
PROBABLY SAMARKAND, CENTRAL ASIA, 10TH CENTURY
On short foot, the interior with a central S-motif in black on a white ground, the sides with similar delicately drawn scrolling designs on a red ground with small white dotted motifs, zigzags around the rim, the exterior plain, repaired breaks
9in. (23.1cm.) diam.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

A few other pottery vessels use a very comparable decorative scheme and technique. Not all are bowls, such as an albarello in the al-Sabah Collection (Oliver Watson, Ceramics from Islamic Lands, London and Kuwait, 2004, no.Gb.3, p.221), and a jug offered in these Rooms 15 October 2006, lot 26. A rounded bowl with closely related decoration was excavated at Afrasiyab/Samarkand (Terres secrètes de Samarkande, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1992, no.170, p.97), while another is used as the frontispiece to Arthur Lane's Early Islamic Pottery of 1947. From among the whole group the present bowl has a particularly strong but refined sense of line.

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