A Khurasan silver-inlaid bronze lidded bowl, Persia, 12th/13th century

Ex-collection Ralph Harari (1893-1969), circa 1950s

Spink & Son, London, before 2000

Gopis, Goddesses & Demons: Indian and Islamic Works of Art, Spink & Son, Friday 17 November 2000, no.1

Inlaid metalwork produced in Khurasan in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries often drew on astrological themes, depicted through figural representations of the planets and constellations. This footed bowl is no exception, but it is more subtle in its execution. Crescent motifs evocative of the moon are positioned within the main registers of the body and lid between leafy ferns. Similarly drawn ferns are found within the waq waq tree border of a magnificent astrological basin sold in these rooms 31 March 2021, lot 74, and on a more sparsely decorated stem bowl in the Nuhad Es-Said collection where they are divided by figural cartouches representing the eclipse and certain constellations (Allan 1982, pp.40-43, no.3). Allan relates the vegetal motifs to the ‘tree-of-life’ and suggests they represent a conflict between the powers of darkness and light (ibid.). The prevalence of the crescents and ferns of this bowl might instead refer to the auspicious nature of the eclipse.

A fourteenth-century high-tin, silver-inlaid cup of almost identical form as the body of this lot is in the British Museum. Although the shape is the same, the decoration of the British Museum example reveals that it was produced post-Mongol invasion due to its use of fleshy arabesques and lotus roundels (Ward 1993, p.95, no.73). A fourteenth-century ceramic goblet of similar proportions, formerly in the Madina Collection, is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (inv. no.M.2002.1.45) which demonstrates the production of ceramic wares that derived from an earlier metalwork prototype.