NEAR EAST OR IRAN, 9TH/10TH CENTURY

The body of this striking vessel is made from a black and white glass cane, thinly sliced and arranged to form a flat panel which was then shaped with a mould. Though it is an ancient technique, practiced by the Romans and Sassanians alike, both traditions had apparently died out by the 4th century. The reemergence of glass of this type, excavated in the palace of al-Mu'tasim in Samarra and thus attributable to the mid-9th century, shows how the Abbasids were no less indebted to the art of Late Antiquity than the Umayyads had been before them.

Bowls made using black and white glass include conical examples similar in form to Samanid bowls. These include large bowls in the Corning Museum of Glass, New York (acc.no.79.1.2) and the David Collection, Copenhagen (acc.no.33 / 1978), both published by Stefano Carboni and David Whitehouse, Glass of the Sultans, New York, 2001, pp.150-1, nos.64 and 65. Boat shaped examples, which may have been influenced by Sassanian silverware, include two in the Khalili Collection (Sidney M. Goldstein, Glass: from Sasanian antecedents to European imitations, Oxford, 2005, nos.84-5, p.87) and one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc.no.1990.185).