A Silver-Inlaid Brass Bowl with Poetic Inscriptions
c. 1340-1350
Fars, South Iran
10 x 22.3 cm; Copper alloy bowl, hammered and turned, engraved, chased, and inlaid with silver and niello; rounded curving base with nearly flat centre, convex sides and sloping shoulder rising inwards to a triangular-section rim.
This elegant bowl is part of a group of metalworking forms that were produced in the south of Iran, probably Fars, after the Mongol invasions of the early thirteenth century. Following the destruction wrought on the region by the Mongols, the new Fars production in South Iran included royal commissions made for patrons from the newly landed Mongol Ilkhanid elite, and featured elaborate inlaid epigraphic and figural bands with gold and silver.
Provenance
Private Collection, U.S.A., by 1971
Excavated in Iran with license and imported into the U.S.A., 1930s-40s
