TWO LACQUERED PAPIER-MÂCHÉ PEN CASES (QALAMDAN)  Iran, 19th century  Each with rounded ends and sliding tray, the top and sides painted with horizontal composition of the typical gul-o-bulbul (rose and nightingale) motif, the birds naturalistically rendered and depicted on branches amidst blooming roses, irises and tulips, the darker qalamdan with a nasta'liq inscription at the top in gold ink Ya Saheb Al-Zaman 1160 AH (1747), the takhallos of Aqa Muhammad Zaman, founder of the Shiraz school of lacquer painting; the latter with a nasta'liq inscription in white ink bottom left Mohammad Baqer 1152 AH (1739), both inscriptions likely later additions, possibly a tribute to the 18th-century artists who originated this specific gul-o-bulbul composition, the first held in a polychrome silver thread-embroidered termeh case, each polychrome-painted against a translucent gold sprinkled dark brown ground, the internal tray and the underside with gold lotus flower trellis and vegetal scrolls on black ground, each 22.5cm long. An almost identical qalamdan to our first one, with the same inscription Ya Saheb Al-Zaman, was once part of the Ezzat-Malek Soudavar Collection (Massumeh Farhad, Mary McWilliams and Simon Rettig, A Collector’s Passion: Ezzat-Malek Soudavar and Persian Lacquer, Washington DC, 2017, p. 32, fig. 8). The large 19th-century production of pen cases with the typical gul-o-bulbul motif shows that referring to the work of past masters by reproducing cherished motifs was an acceptable, even laudable, practice (ibidem).