Oliver White
Head of Department
Lot 6
A wheel-cut glass Flask Persia or Mesopotamia, 9th/ 10th Century
23 April 2013, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street£4,000 - £6,000
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A wheel-cut glass Flask
Persia or Mesopotamia, 9th/ 10th Century
Persia or Mesopotamia, 9th/ 10th Century
amber, with globular body, tapering cylindrical neck and everted mouth with lip, the body facet-cut with two registers of concave oval facets forming a honeycomb pattern, the sloping shoulder with two deeply cut grooves, the neck with three further registers of concave oval facets
7.6 cm. high
7.6 cm. high
Footnotes
In the early Islamic period of the 9th and 10th Centuries, cut glass became the most prominent form of decoration. The Persian contribution to early cut glass began in the Sasanian period and continued until the 11th Century. An example of the continuity of the tradition is provided by facet-cutting as in the present lot, which developed into the "honeycomb" pattern in the most accomplished objects.
Although the decoration is based on a Sasanian model (primarily hemispherical bowls), the shape is purely Islamic. Wheel-cut bottles of this type can be seen in the David Collection, Copenhagen (Kjeld von Folsach, Art from the World of Islam in the David Collection, Copenhagen, 2001, p. 205, no. 298; the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait (Stefano Carboni, Glass from Islamic Lands, London, 2001, pp. 32-35, nos. 9a-d); and the Khalili Collection, London (Sidney Goldstein, Glass, the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Vol XV, London, 2005, pp. 198-99, no. 237).