with globular body, sloping shoulder and tapering neck rising to a bird's head the beak forming the spout, a short, curved handle rises from the rim to the shoulder, the applied decoration shows four standing figures under an arch, flanked on both sides by an ibex and likely representing a festive event
42cm. high

Footnotes

Provenance:
Mr & Mrs Hauge, Washington, acquired in the 1960s.

There is a very similar jug in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York dated to the 8th Century and attributed to Iraq, decorated solely with ibex. Geza Fehervari, the late great scholar of Islamic art, who examined the present jug, thought that the presence of human figures indicated an earlier date than the Metropolitan Museum's piece.(The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin/Spring 1983, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, fig. 1)

The decoration used here is known as barbotine, a technique in which rolled strips and circles of clay were applied to the surface, flattened, and then incised with parallel lines. The technique was also used in the Sassanian period but only fully developed in the early Islamic period.

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An early Islamic unglazed pottery Ewer Iraq, 7th-9th Century

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Matthew Thomas