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Artwork Details
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Title:Ring Sealstone
Date:probably 10th century
Geography:Attributed to Iran, probably Nishapur
Medium:Rock crystal; faceted
Dimensions:H. 7/16 in. (1.1 cm) W. 3/8 in. (1 cm) D. 3/16 in. (.5 cm)
Classification:Seals
Credit Line:Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Habib Anavian, 1980
Accession Number:1980.231
Rock Crystal Ring Sealstone This rock crystal stone offers, without any supplementary data, proof of the existence of resolute, complex, symmetrical faceting of stones in early Islamic Iran. The content of the inscription is of a simple, pious nature "[Whatever] [G]od wills"(?) and thus of no historical significance, but the style of the inscription is datable, probably to the tenth century A.D., not later than the eleventh.
The approach to faceting manifested in the form of the stone is highly consistent with the contemporaneous use in Nishapur of polyhedral forms. Similar in form to this stone are such hardstone beads as MMA 48.101.203 as well as several of the jet beads on strand MMA 40.170.697. The closest parallel, however, is MMA 40.170.282, a small bronze coin weight from the Nishapur excavations.[1] The beads, the present sealstone, and its related bronze weights (a second coin weight, identical to MMA 40.170.282, is in a private collection) were apparently inspired by the form of the (small) rhombicuboctahedron, a form that has an octagonal cross section made up of eight square faces in series at the "waist," from which four squares and four triangles slope to form the "shoulders" and a square at each end. This form is one of the semiregular solids whose discovery is credited to Archimedes. It can be cut from a solid cube by truncating equally the edges and corners so that all resultant edges are equal in length, as shown by Kepler.[2] Ultimately, of course, this form, like all regular and semiregular solids, is based on the sphere, a fact that suggests the intriguing possibility that advanced theoretical geometry filtered down to the level of the craftsman in this Iranian school of polyhedral art of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, for it was the tenth-century mathematician al-Buzjani (d. 998 A.D.) who located the corners of a regular polyhedron with a single span of the compass on the surface of a sphere.[3]
This rock crystal sealstone is, in effect, one end of an elongated (small) rhombicuboctahedron, except that there is a further truncation of the edges, resulting in the would-be-squares having six sides and the would-be triangles having five.
[Jenkins and Keene 1983]
Footnotes:
1. Allan, James. Nishapur Metalwork of the Early Islamic Period. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1982, no. 127.
2. Heath, Thomas. Greek Mathematics. Oxford, 1921, pp. 99–101.
3. Suter, H. "Handasa." The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2. Leiden and London, 1927, p. 257; see also Keene, Manuel. 'The Lapidary Arts in Islam: An Underappreciated Tradition." Expedition 24 (Fall 1981), pp. 30–38.
Inscription: Kufic script (translit.: l'illah; trans: to god) and another word not translated.
Mr. and Mrs. Habib Anavian, New York (until 1980; gifted to MMA)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Islamic Jewelry in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," April 22–August 14, 1983, no. 4a.
New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Fifty Years of Collecting Islamic Art," September 23, 2013–January 26, 2014, no catalogue.
Keene, Manuel. "The Lapidary Arts in Islam." Expedition (1981). p. 37, ill. figs. 21a, 22.
Jenkins-Madina, Marilyn, and Manuel Keene. Islamic Jewelry in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1983. no. 4a, p. 22, ill. (color).
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