PROBABLY IRAN, 9TH/10TH CENTURY

A number of clear glass bottles of this form are known, including examples excavated at Nishapur (Jens Kröger, Nishapur Glass of the Early Islamic Period, New York, 1995, nos.227, pp.172-173). The bottles of this group have a similar size, around 24cm, and most have faceted neck. Although with different decoration, those bottles show the same organization in registers divided by straight lines, either shallow or raised as in the present example. The slight hatching that appears on the animals running around the body - hares, birds and fish - as well as the stylized split palmettes, are very close to those found on a bowl in the Corning Museum of Glass (no. 53.1.109, op. cit., p.141, fig.9) and in the David Collection (no.963, Kjeld von Folsach, Islamic Art, the David Collection, Copenhagen, 1990, p.143, fig.221). At least two similar bottles have been excavated in both funerary and religious contexts in China that can be dated before 1058 AD (Kröger, op. cit., p.173; Sidney M. Goldstein, Glass, London, 2005, p.193). As Goldstein suggests, the fact these bottles were exported far away from their centre of production indicates that they were considered as luxury goods.

A light blue-glass bottle with a similarly ambitious decoration, containing no fewer than ten birds, is in the David Collection and attributed to probably Iran, 9th or 10th century (Stefano Carboni, Glass of the Sultans, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2001, cat.96, pp.191-192).