Glaze: transparent silicious with tinges of green on the under side; coarsely crackled and pitted. Decoration: painted in pale red, brown green, blue and yellow on a white slip under glaze.
This polychrome-painted plate has a revolving central rosette with stems, blossoms and leaves decorating the surrounding area. The rim shows a loosely drawn floral scroll with identical buds, blossoms and twisting leaves. The exterior is plain.
The underglaze colors are quite subdued and murky, and are applied in a carefree manner often running over the black outlines. The galze has a slight greenish tinge and is crackled and pitted.
This example belongs to a group of polychrome pottery generally attributed to the town of Kubachi situated in northwestern Iran. The designs on this gorup are often outlined in black and painted with dark-blue, dull-green, brownish-red, pale-yellow, purple and turquoise pigments. A majority of the pieces represents male and female figures or animals amidst floral motifs. There also exists a number of tiles executed in the same manner.
The red and yellow pigments in this plate are thickly applied, recalling the red used by Turkish potters. Although there is a remote resemblance to polychrome Iznik wares, both the technique and drawing are inferior to sixteenth-century Ottoman pottery, and reveal a completely different style and aesthetic approach.
Long, black twisting leaves, branches with rounded leaves and five-petaled blossoms seem to be part of the common vocabulary of this type of ware (compare with examples in Pope, Survey, pls. 790-794; Lane, Later Islamic Pottery, pls.54 and 55).
Provenance:
To 1903
Dikran G. Kelekian (1868-1951), Cairo, Egypt, Paris, France, and New York to 1903 [1]
From 1903 to 1919
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), purchased from Dikran G. Kelekian in 1903 [2]
From 1920
Freer Gallery of Art, gift of Charles Lang Freer in 1920 [3]
Notes:
[1] See Original Pottery List, L. 1263, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives.
[2] See note 1.
[3] The original deed of Charles Lang Freer's gift was signed in 1906. The collection was received in 1920 upon the completion of the Freer Gallery.
Collection:
Freer Gallery of Art Collection
Exhibition History:
Ceramics from the World of Islam (January 16, 1974 to July 1, 1974)
