A LARGE ENGRAVED COPPER BASIN
Possibly Late Safavid Iran or Central Asia, 18th century

Of tapering cylindrical shape, resting on a large, circular, plain base, with narrow shoulders and an everted, inward-folded, reinforced rim, the exterior engraved with typical Safavid motifs and their negative space filled with a black substance, the rim presenting a band of scrolling rosette tendrils, the neck with alternating arabesques and tri-lobed medallions on stylised volutes, below it another band of vegetal motifs with split palmettes contained within heart-shaped tendrils, the lower and widest panel on the body featuring a sinusoidal strapwork and rosette band passing through cusped medallions filled with arabesques and palmettes, with a rubbed epigraphic nasta'liq script ownership cartouche on the rim reading Saheb-e ... Abdullah Ibn ... Heravi and an undeciphered later-engraved signature in Urdu inside the rim, 32.5cm diam. and 19.5cm high.