CENTRAL IRAN, MID 12TH/EARLY 13TH CENTURY

This bowl is unusual both in its form and the style and technique of its decoration. A comparable example is in the British Museum (acc.no. 1912,0607.1). Like ours, the interior is heavily bleached with most of the lustre having come away, leaving the cobalt-blue details against a white ground. It also has around the exterior a calligraphic band, executed in cobalt-blue in a strikingly similar script to that on our example. A further example which was sold Sotheby's London, 25 April 2012, lot 31, has also lost almost all its lustre leaving only blue and turquoise calligraphy and scrollwork around a mounted horse and rider in the centre. Although the script is quite different, much of the content of the inner inscription on that example also matches the exterior inscription on ours. This suggests a shared Kashani origin for the three bowls.

It is, however, not moulded in the same way that ours is. For this, there is an impressive - though fragmentary - mina'i jar which was sold in these Rooms, 5 October 2010, lot 108, which is now in the Sarikhani collection (acc.no. I.CE.2223; Oliver Watson, Ceramics of Iran, London, 2020, no.119, p.241). That jar is moulded with a star-lattice pattern and a row of mounted figures, against what appears to be a white ground. Though Watson speculates that this white ground may have been part of the potter's 'original intention', he also publishes alongside it an image of a lustreware jar in the National Museum of Iran, Tehran (acc.no. 3391). That example is decorated heavily with lustre, though in many places - such as around the neck, where there is a moulded cobalt-blue inscription similar to that on our bowl - the lustre has almost entirely faded. Perhaps the instability of the lustre on these examples owes something to the way in which the lustre and mina'i techniques were combined, and may represent a short-lived experimental phase in Kashan ceramics.