Bowl with Griffin or Other Winged Quadraped

Although coming from the antiquity market, this small ceramic bowl is similar in technique to examples excavated at Nishapur in Iran. The white-slipped surface bears a painted decoration of a winged, hoofed quadruped, with a lion face and a palmette-ending tail, possibly a griffin or another fantastic creature.

Composite creatures are often portrayed on the material culture of this region, either on ceramic, glass, or metal vessels, as well as on molds for printing leather. They are perhaps mythical beasts, which may have had apotropaic or talismanic properties, and belong to a wider tradition that includes sometimes elements only of living creatures combined with mineral and vegetal components – as those found on wall paintings excavated in a private dwelling at Tepe Madrasa in Nishapur, today in the Met’s collection.