Northwestern Iran
Composite body, underglaze painted and incised
Mr. and Mrs. Isaac D. Fletcher Collection, Bequest of Isaac D. Fletcher, 1917 (17.120.70)
This hemispherical bowl belongs to a series of wares made from the second half of the fifteenth through the seventeenth century and now known as Kubachi, from the name of the town in the Caucasus where many of these pieces were found in the nineteenth century. This bowl is one of a rare early group in the series characterized by a design of ogee panels encircling a central roundel—all of which bear vegetal motifs—reserved on a black ground distinguished by incised, predominantly spiral designs. A brilliant turquoise glaze covers the entire bowl. The four known dated pieces of this group range from 1469 to 1495. They constitute the only three-dimensional ceramic objects that can be securely placed in fifteenth-century Iran.
