THREE LACQUERED PAPIER-MÂCHÉ SINGLE FIGURAL BOOK COVERS
PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
Qajar Iran, 19th and 20th centuries

Each of rectangular shape and different in size, each panel lacquered, polychrome-painted and heightened in gold, comprising a seated Qajar youth in his military gear wearing a steel khula khud on the head and bazuband (armbands) on his lower arms, the portrait arranged in the typical early Qajar style of portraiture set in an imaginary interior with a large iwan arch at the back, the two lines of epigraphic inscriptions in the upper left corner reading Firooz, son of Iskandar, signed Mir 'Ali, dated 1218 AH (1803 AD), 22.3cm x 15cm; another in raised papier-mâché work with a brave horserider charging against a dragon and shooting arrows at him, another man in the foreground assisting the rider, the style of the decoration in line with archaistic Timurid-revival compositions, the back with three cusped medallions with gold arabesque motifs with interlocking vegetal sprays and split palmettes on blue ground, 30cm x 22.5cm; and another, lacquered and polychrome-painted, featuring the encounter scene of Princess Shirin with the stonecutter Farhad from Nizami's epic love poem Khosrow o Shirin in his magnum opus Panj Ganj, signed in black ink on the lower left corner Imam Isfahani, mounted, glazed and framed, 32cm x 22cm excluding the frame.