DAMASCUS, SYRIA, 15TH CENTURY

Details

A MAMLUK HEXAGONAL POTTERY TILE
DAMASCUS, SYRIA, 15TH CENTURY
The white ground painted in cobalt-blue and manganese, with a large ewer flanked on either side by vine issuing cusped foliage and large rosettes, set within two plain manganese borders, small chips to the edge, otherwise intact
7½ x 6½in. (19.2 x 16.5cm.)

Provenance

US private collection since 1981

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Similar Mamluk tiles with depictions of ewers feature in the tomb and mosque of Tawrizi in Damascus. Two others are in the Cairo Museum and one is in Sidon. The ewers seem all to be based on metal prototypes with curving spouts and handles and splayed feet. Although the form of the ewers is hard to parallel in the corpus of metalwork ewers of the 15th century, a possible prototype comes in the form of a similar ewer painted on a Nishapur dish of the 11th century in the British Museum (John Carswell, 'Six Tiles' in Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1972, p.102). There is also obvious possible symbolism with ritual ablution (Esin Atil, Art of the Mamluks, Washington D.C., 1981, p.179).

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