Oliver White
Head of Department
Lot 4
A relief-cut glass Bottle Neck depicting confronting animals Persia, 9th/ 10th Century
23 April 2013, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street£5,000 - £7,000
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A relief-cut glass Bottle Neck depicting confronting animals
Persia, 9th/ 10th Century
Persia, 9th/ 10th Century
of conical form with flaring rim, the upper section of a handle extending from rim, decorated to body with a pair of moulded running animals shown nose-to-nose and forelegs touching, their long ears extended backwards and tails curled upward, the bottom edge of the bottle neck ground, light irridescance to body and handle
8.5 cm. high
8.5 cm. high
Footnotes
This bottle neck formed part of what would presumably have been an elaborately decorated ewer judging by the quality of the glass and of the moulded design.
A very similar bottle neck, still with its full handle and part of the upper body is in the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York (1084.55.1.141) illustrated in D. Whitehouse, Islamic Glass in the Corning Museum, Vol. 1, Corning, New York, 2010, no. 390. The decoration is almost identical; a central band of decoration with two confronted running animals with long ears laid back, although in the Corning example a small oval motif separates the two. The decoration on both lies within a cartouche with raised edges. The base of the neck of both our example and the Corning Museum example contain a horizontal band of six contiguous flat rectangular facets.
A restored complete bottle of pale blue glass in the David Collection, Copenhagen (10/1963) displays a similar decorative repertoire and faceted base to its neck (although with a different mouth). There, the moulded animal decoration on the neck gives way to a sophisticalted and complex design of birds and vegetal motifs hinting at what the body of our ewer may have once looked like.