A Fine Intact Kashan Black and Turquoise Bowl, Persia, Early 13th Century

of truncated conical form with flaring walls stepped down to a straight vertical foot, painted in black under a transparent turquoise alkaline glaze with a band of "water-weed design" around the cavetto and to the well, scalloped patterning to the rim, the exterior with a solid black concentric band

On loan to L'Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, in the 1990s

Published Céramiques du monde musulman, L'Institut du monde arabe, Paris, 1999, p.116 (illustrated).

Glaze craquelure throughout, with some surface wear on the outside of the rim.
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The water-weed design first appears in Persian underglaze-painted wares in the early thirteenth-century. These wares, decorated using a brush, superseded the earlier and more-labour intensive slip-carved "Silhouette wares". The brush had several advantages over the knife: not only did it speed up the design process, but it also allowed for more fluid and painterly decoration, of which this bowl is a fine example.

These wares were produced for export as well as for the domestic market and were closely imitated at the Raqqa potteries of northern Syria. For a discussion of the impact of Persian underglaze-painted designs on Raqqa and Fustat in the first half of the 13th century, see Philon, H., "Stems, Leaves and Water-Weeds: Underglaze-painted pottery in Syria and Egypt", J. Raby (ed.), The Art of Syria and the Jazira, 1100-1250, Oxford, 1985.