A QAJAR LACQUERED PAPIER-MÂCHÉ MIRROR CASE
Iran, 19th century

Of rectangular shape, each side lacquered, polychrome-painted and heightened with gold, the lid's front and the back of the mirror case decorated with two banqueting scenes at the court of the enlightened King Solomon, the King of all Creatures according to the Iranian tradition, the two scenes almost identical with minor variations, portraying the king seated on a gem-encrusted golden throne being offered food, encrusted caskets and boxes full of treasures, surrounded by his faithful advisors, members of the court, winged angels, mythical creatures, demons, animals, birds, the Simurgh and, in one panel, by the Queen of Sheba and Rustam, the Great Hero of Iran, the decoration on the lid's back consisting of the typical gol-o-bolbol motif featuring a plump nightingale in the middle of the composition amidst a full floral bloom with roses, carnations, hyacinths and irises, every lacquered panel set within a frame with white ink nasta'liq calligraphic cartouches on a dark green ground interspersed with lobed polychrome-painted floral roundels, the overall composition a feast for the eyes and a faithful fresco of the fashion and fabrics in use during the Qajar period in Iran, 37cm x 24.5cm.

The Persian poetry accompanying the banqueting scenes describes the glory and magnificence of King Solomon's court. To the back of the mirror case, the poetry includes a line of Sa'di's Sonnet 81, and various other poems regarding courtly love. Instead, on the inside of the lid, there are two different poems on the theme of drunkenness and truthfulness. One poem is written by Ghiasuddin Ali Yazdi (Ghias), a late 17th - early 18th century Safavid court poet. In the poem, Nasir Khosrow observes the transcience of life in a cemetery. The second poem is the winter story of Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavid, drunk, and comfortably asleep in sable furs. Next to him, a beggar seeks warmth on a recently extinguished (but still warm) furnace. Upon rising in the morning, the beggar laments the injustice of such inequality in such proximity.