Enrica Medugno
Senior Sale Coordinator
Lot 34R
A Kashan underglaze-painted pottery mounted figure Persia, 12/ 13th Century
22 May 2025, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£8,000 - £12,000
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Oliver White
Head of Department
A Kashan underglaze-painted pottery mounted figure
Persia, 12/ 13th Century
Persia, 12/ 13th Century
the horse standing upright on all four legs, the rider with reins in one hand, decorated in cobalt blue and black under a turquoise glaze with geometric and vegetal designs, old collection label and Sotheby's lot label (lot 46) to base
20.8 cm. high
20.8 cm. high
Footnotes
Provenance
Formerly in the collection of Dr Mohammad Said Farsi (1936-2019), acquired at Sotheby's in the 1980's.
Dr. Mohammed Said Farsi was the Mayor and then Lord Mayor of Jeddah in the 1970s and 1980s, where he played a crucial role in transforming the city into one of the largest open-air galleries in the world by commissioning monumental sculptures by famous international and Middle Eastern artists, including Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Hans Arp, and Alexander Calder.
Ernst J. Grube has referred to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Seljuk Persia as 'the most productive [period] in the history of Islamic ceramic-making,' with a significant boom in the production of 'portable objects' beginning in the late Seljuk period (Ernst J. Grube, Islamic Pottery of the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century in the Keir Collection, London, 1976, p.158). Monochrome-glazed wares, moulded relief decoration, and small figural, zoomorphic, and architectural models were all popular forms during this period. For a Kashan monochrome mounted figure sold at Sotheby's, Paris, see Regards Sur L'Orient - Tableaux Et Sculptures Orientalistes & Art Islamique, 18 November 2013, lot 53. A similar mounted figure is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Accession No. 66.23).
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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.