Lot Essay
This bowl is of a very rare and unusual shape. It was almost certainly intended to pour liquid. It is decorated in sgraffito, that is the ceramic body was covered with slip which was then carved away to reveal the decoration, a technique which has been associated with the Persian towns of Aghkand south west of Tabriz and Yastkand in the Garrus district near the Caspian Sea. The runny green on the interior is typical of this type of pottery. The outside is decorated in bold palmette scrolls and in two of the decorative compartments with a lion and a hare. Comparisons for this type of ceramic can be found in Lane, A.: Early Islamic Pottery, London, 1947, pl. 31b and 33b.
A strikingly similar lion is depicted on a carved stone panel in the Louvre, which has been attributed to twelfth century Hamadan (see L'Islam dans les collections nationales, Paris, 1977, p. 114, no. 204).
A strikingly similar lion is depicted on a carved stone panel in the Louvre, which has been attributed to twelfth century Hamadan (see L'Islam dans les collections nationales, Paris, 1977, p. 114, no. 204).