Published Catalogue Text: In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art , written 2013
136
Dish with horseman and arabesque
Probably Iran, 20th century[1]
Reddish earthenware covered in white slip, carved, and painted with green (copper), yellow (iron), and dark brown (manganese) under clear lead glaze (with zinc and barium)
4.4 × 28 cm (1 3/4 × 11 in.)
2002.50.62
Published: McWilliams 2003, 238, fig. 14.
The off-white slip that covers this dish has been incised with a complicated design further elaborated in green, yellow, and purplish brown. An equestrian image fills the center of the dish: a crowned horseman wears a garment decorated with vertical stripes and an overlying arabesque, and his yellow horse is embellished with scribbled lines. A vigorous arabesque fills the background behind horse and rider. Running along the rim is an angular guilloche enclosing crosshatched segments of alternating yellow and green. Except for the base, the dish is entirely covered with a white slip and a clear glaze. It has been reassembled from eight fragments, with no significant losses.
The horseman steals a glance backward—as did the potter who made this dish. Although dated to the twentieth century by thermoluminescence testing, the dish imitates a type of sgraffito vessels traditionally known as Aghkand wares, which are said to have been found at Aghkand, in northwestern Iran, and usually assigned to the twelfth century. In 1938, an influential exponent of Persian art, Arthur Upham Pope, singled Aghkand wares out for praise, labeling them “more intellectual, more Persian, and ultimately more interesting” than any comparable ceramics of the period.[2]
Mary McWilliams
[1] The dish was last fired within the past 100 years, according to results of thermoluminescence analysis carried out by Oxford Authentication Ltd. in 2002. Together with cats. 137–42, this vessel is placed in the Calderwood Study Collection because thermoluminescence analysis has indicated a last firing considerably later than the period to which it belongs stylistically.
[2] A. U. Pope 1938–39, 2:1526. See also McWilliams 2003, 237–39.
