Gertrude Bell, the famous archaeologists and writer, received the photograph of this bowl during her 1909 trip to Syria, likely from a diplomat and antiquity dealer in Aleppo. This and other vessels in the photo were said to come from Raqqa. While many of these objects were actually found in Raqqa, the high demand of "Raqqa ware" on the market in the early 20th century certainly had as a consequence that dealers would always claim such provenance for their objects. Archaeological research has now ascertained that similar objects, whose distribution included Anatolia, Syria, Egypt and even in Europe, were produced in several workshops in Syria and Egypt.
The main design painted on this bowl recalls an epigraphic motif in which the vertical shafts of the letters lam and alif are richly interlaced among them.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Bowl with Alif-lam Motif
Date:12th century
Geography:Probably from Syria, Raqqa
Medium:Stonepaste; polychrome painted under transparent glaze.
Dimensions:H. 3 in. (7.6 cm) Diam. 10 3/8 in. (26.4 cm)
Classification:Ceramics
Credit Line:Fletcher Fund, 1934
Object Number:34.71
Bowl
The power of the calligraphically-based design on this bowl, painted in black under a transparent turquoise glaze, is another example of the boldness of approach that characterized Syrian, as opposed to Persian, ceramic decoration. This was a popular design on large monochrome glazed relief-decorated and often luster-painted jars from Syria. The shape of this bowl and that of the filler panels are also paralleled in contemporary Syrian luster-painted ware of the type illustrated in MMA 1970.24 (no. 48 in this catalogue).
Composite-bodied objects seem to have been almost exclusively covered with alkaline glazes, to the exclusion of lead-fluxed glazes, in twelfth-to-fourteenth-century Syria and during the Timurid and Safavid periods in Iran. However, and contrary to widely accepted opinion, these alkaline glazes were used only sporadically in Seljuq and Ilkhanid Iran, where lead glazes continued to be the preferred covering for the composite-bodied wares.
Marilyn Jenkins in [Berlin 1981]
Marking: Sticker on base: H K Monif / 843 / 645 Madison Av / New York
[ Vincenzo Marcopoli & Co, Aleppo, Turkey; in 1909]; Thomas B. Clarke, New York (until 1925; his sale, American Art Galleries,, New York, January 7–10, 1925, lot 633; [ Hassan Khan Monif, New York, until 1934; sold to MMA]
Berlin. Museum für Islamische Kunst, Pergamonmuseum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. "The Arts of Islam. Masterpieces from the M.M.A.," June 15, 1981–August 8, 1981, no. 49.
Dimand, Maurice S. "Accessions of Islamic Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin vol. 31 (1936). p. 146.
Grube, Ernst J. "Raqqa-Keramik im Metropolitan Museum in New York." Kunst des Orients vol. 4 (1963). p. 56, ill. fig. 12.
"Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York." In The Arts of Islam. Berlin, 1981. no. 49, pp. 132–33, ill. (b/w).
Ettinghausen, Richard, Oleg Grabar, and Marilyn Jenkins-Madina. Islamic Art and Architecture 650–1250. 2nd ed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001. p. 250, ill. fig. 413 (color).
Orient de Saladin : L'Art des Ayyoubides. Paris: Gallimard, 2001. 161, no. 147, ill. (color).
Jenkins-Madina, Marilyn. "Ceramics of Ayyubid Syria." In Raqqa Revisited. New York; New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006. pp. 28–29, 32,145, 166–70, 173, 222, ill. fig. 2.5 (b/w), pl. MMA30 (color).
Canby, Sheila R., Deniz Beyazit, and Martina Rugiadi. "The Great Age of the Seljuqs." In Court and Cosmos. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016. p. 186, ill. fig. 74.
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