A Kashan Lustre Decorated Ewer in the form of a Sphinx, Persia, Circa 1200

body in the form of a crouching female sphinx resting on a base, limbs and body painted with a scrolling foliate motif, the handle formed from the curled plumes of the wings, the head with a pointed headdress which formed the pouring lip of the vessel

A large variety of glazed figurines were made in Iran and Syria during the late 12th and early 13th centuries, probably in Kashan and Raqqa, both centres of luxury pottery production during the period. The art of this period is notable for its unprecedented focus on the figural which might explain the sudden taste for three-dimensional ceramic sculptures. Although some of the figurines were made to be purely decorative the majority were made as functional, if rather inconvenient vessels with pouring spouts incorporated into the design.

The subject matter of the figurines is very wide ranging encompassing birds - hoopoe, falcon and cockerel; domesticated and wild animals - bull, camel, elephant, lion, sheep, monkey, cat, mouse; and mythical creatures - harpy and sphinx. Human figures were also made, amongst them, musicians playing a number of different instruments, horsemen dressed in Turkish military costume and most unusual of all, women suckling an infant from a naked breast. The breast feeding women perhaps offered protection during the hazardous periods of childbirth and early infancy while the horsemen may have appealed to members of the Turkish military elite. Harpies and sphinxes had apotropaic qualities and were associated with good fortune.

The style of lustre painting on the surface of the sphinx fits in with Oliver Watson’s ‘Kashan’ style: the background to the swirling foliage is filled with the characteristic small spirals and commas scratched through the lustre to show the white ground (Watson 1985, pp.86-109).  The majority of figurines decorated in lustre are not painted in this style but in the earliest ‘Monumental’ datable to before 1200 which suggests that production of ceramic figures was at its most prolific around the turn of the 12th century.

Although there survive a large number of ceramic harpies, made as vessels and decorated both with lustre and turquoise glazes this example of a sphinx has no direct comparisons, apart from a small figurine made as a solid figure and without the elaborate plumage (Art Islamique dans les Collections Privées Libanaises, Musée Nicolas Sursock, Beirut, 1974, no. 73). However, a lustre dish in the Victoria & Albert Museum  (no. 32-1954, see Baer, E., Sphinxes and harpies in medieval art, Jerusalem, 1965, no.20) is supported by three sphinx-shaped supports which resemble this lot closely in facial details and type of headdress. The dish sits where the wings would be attached, but there is a harpy figure with an almost identical tail design with the plumes of the feathers curling back to attach to the head and form the handle in the Iran Bastan Museum, Teheran (inv. no. 3342; see Athar e-Iran, vol. 1, 1936, fig.187).

A large standing sphinx of quite different appearance, with wings and tail terminating in snake-like heads, which functioned as a fountainhead, was found at Raqqa (David Collection, Copenhagen, Isl. 56, see von Folsach 2001, p.158) and another in a similar stance but with a vase held up by a ring of male figures was recently sold at Christie’s, 10 October 2006, lot 100.