Plate with Vegetal Decoration in a Seven-pointed Star

Plate

In its shape and decoration, this large platter is typical of ceramics made at Kirman in south-eastern Iran, the leading ceramic production site between around 1650 and 1680. In that period, demand for Chinese-inspired wares expanded markedly at home and abroad, and Kirman potters rose to the challenge by adopting new techniques and designs. Along with blue-underglaze decoration, the potter here has enlivened the palette with orange, green, and black slip as well as with spirals scratched through the black in each of the cartouches forming a band beneath the rim. While spiky leaves adorn many Kirman wares, the black band is characteristic of a particular group of plates dated between 1065 / 1654–55 and 1090 / 1679–80.[1]

The central decoration on the interior consists of a star, its points joined by brackets containing an orange dianthus blossom and pointed green leaves and stalks. Within that star, seven small triangles with orange-vine and blossom motifs surround an underglaze-blue disk with wormlike clouds in reserve and a blue roundel with white rays at the center. Snail-shaped clouds are reserved against a blue ground beneath the black band, while around the rim runs a band of simple leaves and vines. The star and brackets and their decoration, along with the black band, closely resemble those found on a slightly smaller plate in the Victoria and Albert Museum with a four-pointed star.[2] The exterior bases of both plates have three tassel marks in underglaze blue that imitate the regnal marks on Chinese ceramics. The stems, lotus, and other leaves on the exterior here were common in the mid-seventeenth century, but their careless execution suggests the work of an assistant rather than the potter who decorated the interior.

Sheila R. Canby in [Higgins Harvey 2021]

Footnotes:

1. Golombek, Lisa, "Dominant Fashions and Distinctive Styles." In Lisa Golombek, Robert B. Mason, Patricia Proctor, and Eileen Reilly, Persian Pottery in the First Global Age: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, p. 99. Arts and Archeology of the Islamic World 1. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

2. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/085981/dish-unknown/; Lane, Arthur, Later Islamic Pottery: Persia, Syria, Egypt, Turkey. Faber Monographs on Pottery and Porcelain. London: Faber and Faber, 1957, fig. 61a.

Marking: Underside, in black, three spaced tassel marks

Edward C. Moore (American), New York (until d. 1891; bequeathed to MMA)

Pope, Arthur Upham. An Introduction to Persian Art Since the Seventh Century A.D.. London: Peeter Davies, Ltd. by the Shenval Press, 1930. ill. fig. 42.

Pope, Arthur Upham, ed. Survey of Persian Art: The Ceramic Arts, Calligraphy and Epigraphy. Vol. IV. London: Oxford University Press, 1938. vol. V, ill. pl. 800B (b/w).

Beyazit, Deniz, Maryam Ekhtiar, and Sheila R. Canby. Collecting Inspiration : Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co., edited by Medill Higgins Harvey. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021. no. 131, p. 197, ill.