Faceted Basin, Mina'i ("enameled") ware

This elaborately and extensively decorated flat-bottomed basin has slightly curved walls divided into twelve facets. Beginning at the center of the vessel, and emanating from a six-pointed star enclosing a rosette, is a dense pattern, the main elements of which are rendered in low relief, perhaps through slip trailing, and are gilded and outlined in red.(1) The pattern is set against a light blue background that is occasionally interrupted by small areas reserved in white. Other segments of the pattern are picked out in red. The faceted sides of the basin are decorated with a repetitive pseudo-Kufic inscription in low relief and gilded and outlined in red. On the exterior, against a cream background, is a naskhi inscription in blue, written in an ordinary hand. Although not completely legible, the inscription provides the signature of the artist: عمل برهان کاشاني (work of Burhan of Kashan), and a Persian quatrain (ruba‘i), a love poem.(2) The name Burhan is new to the list of Kashan potters of mina’i ware who signed their work and is thus of particular importance.(3) Both the general shape of the basin and its crisply defined faceting suggest the influence of metalwork. This type of form occurs in that medium in Iran at least as early as the second half of the twelfth century, while the same dense, compartmentalized decoration including the six-pointed star enclosing a rosette is likewise found in metalwork.(4) Although the basin is relatively well preserved, it includes some areas of restoration, particularly on the exterior, which hampers a full reading of the inscription.(5)

Catalogue entry from Linda Komaroff. The Robert Collection. Decorative Arts, Volume XV. Wolfram Koeppe, et al. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 355.

NOTES:
1. On the motif of the six-pointed star, or “Seal of Solomon,” see Perpetual Glory: Medieval Islamic Ceramics from the Harvey B. Plotnick Collection. Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago, 31 March – 28 October 2007. Catalogue by Oya Pancaroğlu. Chicago and New Haven, 2007, p. 34.
2. I am most grateful to Abdullah Ghouchani for this reading, which he will discuss in a forthcoming article in the Bulletin of the Asia Institute. In an email communication dated June 24, 2010, Ghouchani questioned whether Burhan is a title rather than a name (that is, “Burhan al-Din”) and suggested that it might also be read as Mardan.
3. See Watson, Oliver. “Documentary Mīnā’ī and Abu Zaid’s Bowls.” In The Art of the Saljūqs in Iran and Anatolia: Proceedings of a Symposium in Edinburgh in 1982, edited by Robert Hillenbrand, pp. 170 – 80. Islamic Art and Architecture 4. Costa Mesa, Calif., 1994, p. 171, for other signed mina’i wares.
4. See Oliver Watson. “Pottery and Metal Shapes in Persia in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” In Pots and Pans: A Colloquium on Precious Metals and Ceramics in the Muslim, Chinese and Graeco-Roman Worlds, Oxford, 1985, edited by Michael Vickers, pp. 205 – 12. Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 3. Oxford, 1986, esp. figs. 2, 2a; similarly Tabbaa, Yasser. “Bronze Shapes in Iranian Ceramics of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” Muqarnas 4, 1987, pp. 98 – 113. See Melikian-Chirvani, Assadullah Souren. Islamic Metalwork from the Iranian World, Eighth – Eighteenth Centuries. Victoria and Albert Museum. London, 1982, p. 63, fig. 26, for an example in metalwork that has sixteen rather than twelve facets, but which otherwise shares a very similar decorative concept with the Lehman vessel, and no. 39 for a simpler, twelve-sided dish that perhaps dates to the first half of the thirteenth century.
5. The basin was X-rayed and examined under ultraviolet light in the Objects Conservation department, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in April 1986.

Robert Lehman, New York