A fine underglaze painted pottery Bottle Persia, circa 1200-1220
£5,000 - £7,000
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Find your local specialistA fine underglaze painted pottery Bottle
Persia, circa 1200-1220
Persia, circa 1200-1220
30.5 cm high
Footnotes
The inscription is a Persian quatrain.
During the last quarter of the 12th Century in Persia there were rapid technological advances in ceramic production. These included the use of lustre and minai technique. Allied to this was the ability to paint fluid designs with a brush in underglaze colours. Previously, designs were done in slip which was trimmed with a knife. These innovations were not only restricted to decoration, but included the body material as well. Clay was used for the body until the 12th Century when frit was introduced. The frit body which is a mixure of ground quartz with clay and glaze, enabled the Muslim pottery to achieve a thin, white, porcelain like body.
This bottle is a superb example of the type of pottery that was produced at Kashan before the Mongol invasion of the 1220's. It displays brilliant, fluid designs with a porcelainous body. The decoration can be compared with examples from the Gurgan Finds such as a bowl in the Teheran Museum (Mehdi Bahrami, Gurgan Faiences, Cairo, 1949, pl. XXV), and the shape with a precisely datable lustre pottery bottle (op. cit. , pl. LXXXVII).