Plate with low foot

Object Details

• Description

  Plate, large with a flaring marly; low foot.

  Clay: sandy, buff.

  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).

• Previous custodian or owner

  Dikran Garabed Kelekian (1868-1951) (C.L. Freer source)

  Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919)

• 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.

• Origin

  Iran

• Credit Line

  Gift of Charles Lang Freer

• Type

  Vessel

• Restrictions and Rights

  CC0 - Creative Commons (CC0 1.0)

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• Related Resources

  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1700s, 1710s, 1720s, 1500s, 1610s, 1600s, 1590s, 1650s, 1540s, 1530s, 1640s, 1520s, 1630s, 1510s, 1620s, 1580s, 1730s, 1690s, 1570s, 1680s, 1560s, 1670s, 1550s, 1660s

• Name

  Freer, Charles Lang, Kelekian, Dikran Garabed

• Topic

  S?afavid dynasty, 1501-1736, Art, Arts of the Islamic World

• Culture

  Muslims, Iranians

• Object Type

  Vessels (containers)