A COBALT BLUE AND COPPER-LUSTRE KASHAN-REVIVAL POTTERY BOWL
Kashan, Iran, dated 1218 AH (1803)

Of deep rounded shape, resting on a short straight circular foot, the body painted in copper lustre and cobalt blue in the style of 11th and 12th-century monumental type Kashan pottery productions, in the centre of the bowl a male and a female figure seated next to each other, dressed in the typical Central Asian fashion of earlier examples, with rounded haloes around their heads, set against a copper lustre ground with vegetal sprays and birds, the cavetto decorated with concentric bands of free-flowing calligraphy alternating with scrolling trellis and rectangular cartouches of stylised cypress trees - the quintessential symbol of the Beloved in Persian poems, the exterior with another calligraphic band around the rim quoting the Sufi poet Rumi and vegetal motifs at mid-height, the base stamped with the inscription Saheb-e Mir Ahmad al-Kashi 1218, 31.5cm diam. and 14cm high.