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Lot Essay
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the fashion for richly decorated interiors gained enormous popularity in Damascus. Adapting a Western European style to more traditional Near-Eastern wooden interiors, Damascene notables initiated a taste for richly decorated rooms permeated with various influences and involving many sophisticated techniques.
The interest for these panelled rooms and the fashion for collecting them can be traced back to the 19th century when they were sought after for the residences of dignitaries or wealthy members of the Damascene and Alepine society . See for example the Aleppo Room of the Pergamon Museum, Berlin (I. 2862; www.smb-digital.de accessed 08/09/2017), which was formerly the lobby of a Christian merchant’s house dated 1601-03.
Our ceiling illustrates the various architectural and iconographic techniques and forms used to decorate the wooden panels that would have covered wealthy houses of Syria. The panels would have covered the walls and the ceiling. Often these were coated in plaster to be then carved and painted, recalling the early medieval architectural works on stucco found on the Umayyad palaces of the Syrian steppe.
Our ceiling has similar falling spandrels worked with muqarnas as the ceiling of the Damascus room dated in an inscription to 1707 which was donated by Hagop Kevorkian to the Metropolitan Museum, New York (1970.170; Maryam D. Ekhtiar, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby and Navina Najat Haidar (eds.), Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2011, no.238, pp.333). The muqarnas seen on our ceiling are gilt giving a rising effect to the panel. The inner gilding of those typically Islamic architectural devices is also used in the merchant’s room in Berlin. The same light blue colour found on our ceiling in the calligraphic panels highlights the muqarnas of the Berlin Aleppo room. Both also share the elegance of the swaying tendrils running along the side of each narrow panels either side each of its doors. The exuberance of the stellar patterns echoes the foliated and floral cruciform motifs of the pillars found on a room that sold in these Rooms, 13 April 2010, lot 265 while the hanging rosacea of its ceiling mirrored the muqarnas centre-piece applique between two octagonal roundels. Furthermore, the Metropolitan Museum room and our ceiling also have in common the use of intricate floral sprays and the omnipresence of calligraphic inscriptions in bold script within cusped and scalloped cartouches. All of this suggests a similar 18th century dating for our ceiling.
Comparable ceiling and rooms can be seen in situ at the salon doré in the house of Henri Pharaon in Beirut which panels bear the date of 1772 AD (Demeure de M. Henri Pharaon, Comité de la Société Latine de Bienfaisance, Beirut).
A number of polychrome painted wooden architectural elements from Ottoman Syrian rooms sold at Christie’s, London, 21 June 2000, lot 21, Christie's London, 5 October 2010, lot 332, Christie's London, 7 April 2011 and Christie's South Kensington, 214 April 2012, lot 49.
The interest for these panelled rooms and the fashion for collecting them can be traced back to the 19th century when they were sought after for the residences of dignitaries or wealthy members of the Damascene and Alepine society . See for example the Aleppo Room of the Pergamon Museum, Berlin (I. 2862; www.smb-digital.de accessed 08/09/2017), which was formerly the lobby of a Christian merchant’s house dated 1601-03.
Our ceiling illustrates the various architectural and iconographic techniques and forms used to decorate the wooden panels that would have covered wealthy houses of Syria. The panels would have covered the walls and the ceiling. Often these were coated in plaster to be then carved and painted, recalling the early medieval architectural works on stucco found on the Umayyad palaces of the Syrian steppe.
Our ceiling has similar falling spandrels worked with muqarnas as the ceiling of the Damascus room dated in an inscription to 1707 which was donated by Hagop Kevorkian to the Metropolitan Museum, New York (1970.170; Maryam D. Ekhtiar, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby and Navina Najat Haidar (eds.), Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2011, no.238, pp.333). The muqarnas seen on our ceiling are gilt giving a rising effect to the panel. The inner gilding of those typically Islamic architectural devices is also used in the merchant’s room in Berlin. The same light blue colour found on our ceiling in the calligraphic panels highlights the muqarnas of the Berlin Aleppo room. Both also share the elegance of the swaying tendrils running along the side of each narrow panels either side each of its doors. The exuberance of the stellar patterns echoes the foliated and floral cruciform motifs of the pillars found on a room that sold in these Rooms, 13 April 2010, lot 265 while the hanging rosacea of its ceiling mirrored the muqarnas centre-piece applique between two octagonal roundels. Furthermore, the Metropolitan Museum room and our ceiling also have in common the use of intricate floral sprays and the omnipresence of calligraphic inscriptions in bold script within cusped and scalloped cartouches. All of this suggests a similar 18th century dating for our ceiling.
Comparable ceiling and rooms can be seen in situ at the salon doré in the house of Henri Pharaon in Beirut which panels bear the date of 1772 AD (Demeure de M. Henri Pharaon, Comité de la Société Latine de Bienfaisance, Beirut).
A number of polychrome painted wooden architectural elements from Ottoman Syrian rooms sold at Christie’s, London, 21 June 2000, lot 21, Christie's London, 5 October 2010, lot 332, Christie's London, 7 April 2011 and Christie's South Kensington, 214 April 2012, lot 49.
