Bowl with Quails

Location: Syria

Materials: stonepaste ware, painted in yellowish-brown lustre over a transparent glaze (‘Tell Minis’ ware)

Dimensions: 10.8 x 19.2cm

Accession Number: POT 1750

Other Notes:

The bowl has straight sides, slightly everted at the rim, and a low foot. The shape is unusual, but other examples with a similar profile decorated with lustre, or bearing carved flutes, are known.

The exterior has a frieze of quails with sprigs in their beaks and at their tails. Inside is a central 8-petalled rosette and a band of floriated Kufic. The inscription is benedictory and reads, ‘Perpetual glory, sovereignty, perpetual glory, sovereignty, perpetual glory.’

[For ‘Tell Minis’ ware, see POT 1748].

Bibliography:

J.M. Rogers, The Arts of Islam. Masterpieces from the Khalili Collection, London 2010, cat.141, p.141.