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Lot Essay
Safavid metalwork using high-tin bronze or bell metal are extremely rare to find. The metal is more difficult to manufacture and then harder to engrave. There are however two bowls of very similar form and construction in the Victoria and Albert Museum, each of which, as here, has a band of inscription above an overall design covering the rest of the walls (Melikian-Chirvani, 1982, nos.161 and 162, pp.345-347). Melikian notes that the designs on the two in the Victoria and Albert Museum are very different, but uses the calligraphy and layout, together with the technique, to tie them together and give them both the same attribution of 17th century Western Iran, probably Isfahan. There is a third bowl in the same metal, of very similar but more vertical form, also in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which has a very different layout of decoration (Melikian-Chirvani, 1982, no.117, pp.279-282). Signed by Ustad Mahmud `Ali and dated 916/1510-11, the inscription band is far broader with the inscription divided into much more separate cartouches, while the lower part of the bowl is filled with very large cloudband motifs.
The present bowl is far more similar to the first two in terms of layout, but in terms of the quality and execution of the decoration it is the first that it resembles. The lines are drawn with an extraordinary assuredness, and they are set against a very finely cross-hatched ground. In his work on the engraved copper and copper alloy vessels in the Hermitage, Anatol Ivanov uses the cross-hatching of the background as an indicator of 16th rather than 17th century workmanship (Ivanov, 2014, pp.280-281).
The design itself on this bowl is as complex as any interlace engraved on brass. It has three complete layers of decoration which are completely distinct, an arrangement found in the best and earliest of the Safavid vase carpets of the second half of the 16th century. The top layer is of two overlaid bands of cusped roundels, the centres of one roundel marked by the linking of the circles in the other band. Beneath this, and springing from the points where the roundels join, is the most complex layer, of scrolling arabesques terminating in split palmettes. The third layer, mostly filling gaps in the second, but clearly on a lower plane, is floral scrollwork issuing vegetal elements that springs both from the junctures of the circles and also from the centre of a few split palmettes. This is a very complex design to execute, even on a flat surface, but even more so on the rounded surface of the present bowl.
A final point is that the two 17th century bowls most similar in form and decoration each have a cartouche filled with an Armenian inscription. One cannot help but wonder if the present bowl reached the Greeks in the 18th century through an Armenian Christian link.
The present bowl is far more similar to the first two in terms of layout, but in terms of the quality and execution of the decoration it is the first that it resembles. The lines are drawn with an extraordinary assuredness, and they are set against a very finely cross-hatched ground. In his work on the engraved copper and copper alloy vessels in the Hermitage, Anatol Ivanov uses the cross-hatching of the background as an indicator of 16th rather than 17th century workmanship (Ivanov, 2014, pp.280-281).
The design itself on this bowl is as complex as any interlace engraved on brass. It has three complete layers of decoration which are completely distinct, an arrangement found in the best and earliest of the Safavid vase carpets of the second half of the 16th century. The top layer is of two overlaid bands of cusped roundels, the centres of one roundel marked by the linking of the circles in the other band. Beneath this, and springing from the points where the roundels join, is the most complex layer, of scrolling arabesques terminating in split palmettes. The third layer, mostly filling gaps in the second, but clearly on a lower plane, is floral scrollwork issuing vegetal elements that springs both from the junctures of the circles and also from the centre of a few split palmettes. This is a very complex design to execute, even on a flat surface, but even more so on the rounded surface of the present bowl.
A final point is that the two 17th century bowls most similar in form and decoration each have a cartouche filled with an Armenian inscription. One cannot help but wonder if the present bowl reached the Greeks in the 18th century through an Armenian Christian link.