Bowl, Mina'i ("enameled") ware

A well-potted bowl with deep, slanting sides, the main decoration is in the form of a monumental horse and rider enclosed by a medallion. The figures are set against a background of large blue leaves and clouds, and slender gold spirals on a white ground; curious elements, which appear to be isolated Arabic letters or fragments of words, are interspersed within the background of spirals. Around the central figural medallion is a slender band of split-leaf arabesques rendered in low relief and gilded. The patterning on the steep sides of the vessel is picked out in low relief and gilded, within which are areas of blue and turquoise, the whole set against a white background. All of the gilded ornament is outlined in red. Even among mina’i ware, this is a particularly sumptuous, almost excessively extravagant piece, meant to impress, and likely made for a special patron. Indeed, just below the lip is a gilded inscriptional band rendered in low relief and probably produced, like the other raised decoration, by slip trailing; the text, written in naskhi, is not fully preserved, but what remains can be identified as a series of titles, the reading of which should remain tentative.(1) On the exterior the decoration is far simpler, comprising a knotted pseudo-Kufic band in dark blue, interspersed with turquoise leaves and red dots. Abdullah Ghouchani, who studied this vessel’s inscriptions, has noted the name Abu Bakr, perhaps identifiable with Abu Bakr Turghanshah, governor of Nishapur, in eastern Iran, 1173 – 85.(2) This individual’s name and titles are recorded on a mina’i bottle now in the Miho Museum, Shigaraki, Japan. Like the Lehman bowl, the Miho bottle is elaborately decorated with gilded sliptrailed ornament,(3) and both are luxury wares worthy of a member of the ruling elite. There are a number of areas of restoration on the Lehman vessel, including a fairly large segment of the wall, which has interfered with some sections of the inscription; part of the horse and the lower body of the rider also appear to have been restored, although the overall composition does not seem altered.(4) The horse and rider, singly or in pairs, is a common motif among late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Persian ceramic wares as is well demonstrated even by the comparatively limited samplings from the Robert Lehman Collection.(5) Abstract patterns of the same type as on the interior walls of the bowl are also a popular form of decoration among those mina’i wares that include gilded relief ornament. Related designs occur on another Lehman bowl (No. 363), as well as on a number of other contemporary objects.(6) The spiral background of the figural composition is a feature specifically associated with the contemporary lusterware of Kashan but is not otherwise known in the mina’i technique. Its use on the Lehman bowl further confirms the close relationship between the two techniques and their practitioners.(7)

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, pp. 357-358.

NOTES:
1. I am grateful for Abdullah Ghouchani’s kind assistance with the reading.
2. Email communication with the author, July 31, 2007.
3. Miho Museum: South Wing. [Japan.], 1997, pp. 288 – 89, no. 140.
4. The vessel was X-rayed and examined under ultraviolet light in the Objects Conservation department, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in April 1986. The repaired section of the wall probably represents a comparatively old restoration, as a ceramic fill was used, a method and material that are now outdated.
5. See Watson, Oliver. Ceramics from Islamic Lands. London, 2004, no. p.2, for a partially preserved bowl with horseman and slip-trailed and gilded decoration.
6. See, for example, Ceramics from the World of Islam. Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1973. Catalogue by Esin Atil. Washington, D.C., 1973, no. 47; Grube, Ernst J. Islamic Pottery of the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century in the Keir Collection. London, 1976, nos. 149, 150.
7. See Oliver Watson, “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, 1994, Costa Mesa, Calif., pp. 145 – 49.

Robert Lehman, New York