A LACQUERED PAPIER-MÂCHÉ PEN CASE (QALAMDAN) WITH A EUROPEAN LADY'S PORTRAIT
PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
Qajar Iran, late 19th century

With rounded ends and sliding tray, lacquered, polychrome-painted and heightened in gold, the top painted with a long oval cartouche in the centre filled with a European lady's standing portrait and the sides with two romantic horizontal landscape views inspired by Russian prototypes, European-style gilt vegetal meanderings and decorative grids, and typical Qajar lush rose bouquets filling the remaining spaces, all against a black-painted ground, the sliding tray all painted black, 21cm long.

The composition on this pen case is inspired by a similar one, though more refined, produced in Shiraz, signed Lutfallah al-Hamzawi and dated 1314 AH (1896-7), now in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art - LAQ510 (N.D. Khalili, B.W. Robinson & T. Stanley, Lacquer of the Islamic Lands: Part 2, London, 1997, cat. 456, p. 230). Iranian models, like ours and the one in the Khalili Collection, depart from standard Qajar compositions and show a quite clear indebtedness to the late 19th-century Russian prototypes made for the Iranian market.

By the last quarter of the 19th century, both Russian and Japanese lacquer manufacturers were targeting the Qajar market, attracted by the Iranians' persistent appreciation for this medium (Massumeh Farhad, Mary McWilliams and Simon Rettig, A Collector’s Passion: Ezzat-Malek Soudavar and Persian Lacquer, Washington DC, 2017, p. 35). It wasn't long before the Iranian craftsmen started reproducing the imported models from Lukutin and the Fedoskino factory, making the luxury import goods with European portraits and elongated oval cartouches with Russian romantic landscapes available to a broader local audience, closing the great circular journey of Iranian lacquer, which started with the Iranian inspiration of lacquer models produced in Italy, France, Germany and Russia and came back to Iran at the end of the Qajar Epoque.