Enrica Medugno
Senior Sale Coordinator
Lot 23R
An Ayyubid or early Mamluk marvered glass bottle Egypt or Syria, 12th/ 13th Century
22 May 2025, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£15,000 - £20,000
Looking for a similar item?
Our Islamic and Indian Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialistAsk about this lot
Oliver White
Head of Department
An Ayyubid or early Mamluk marvered glass bottle
Egypt or Syria, 12th/ 13th Century
Egypt or Syria, 12th/ 13th Century
of dark brown glass and flattened ovoid form with slight kick to base, the shoulders tapering to a flaring neck, decorated with undulating marvered white trailing
11 cm. high
11 cm. high
Footnotes
Provenance
Professor Oliver Watson (1949-2023)
Sotheby's, Arts of the Islamic World, 8 October 2008, lot 124.
Practiced in antiquity, marvered glass rose to popularity again in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. It was created by adding trails of glass, normally white or pale-coloured, to a dark matrix and tooling them into patterns before using a marver (a polished stone or iron slab) to push the decoration into the surface. For further information on Islamic marvered glass, see S. Carboni, Glass from Islamic Lands: The Al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait National Museum, London, 2001, pp. 291-321.
Important Notice to Buyers
Some countries, e.g., the US, prohibit or restrict the purchase by its citizens (wherever located) and/or the import of certain types of works of particular origins. As a convenience to buyers, Bonhams has marked with the symbol R all lots of Iranian (Persian) and Syrian origin. It is each buyer's responsibility to ensure that they do not bid on or import a lot in contravention of the sanctions or trade embargoes that apply to them.