Furniture; Italian c.1500

Comb, boxwood with openwork and micromosaic decoration in bone, and studded with silver

Where the decoration is missing, we can see that it was stuck directly to the surface of the wood, and that each tiny element was individually attached in the manner of a mosaic. This decorative technique was a characteristic of Nasrid woodwork and is called taracea in Spanish. (M. Rosser-Owen, 2010).

Until the sixteenth century, the Middle East sat firmly at the centre of the known world, and its connections with East and South Asia, Europe and Africa made it the hub of a great system of trade routes. One result of this near-global pattern of commerce was that the artists and craftsmen of the Islamic Middle East had to compete with the best in the world, as in the case of Chinese ceramics. On many occasions they met the challenge with considerable success, and the new wares they created were exported to other regions, where they were sometimes replicated by local craftsmen. In other words, artistic ideas circulated in an International system that existed in parallel to, and in dependence on, the system of trade. As a result work become affected by the constant interchanges between the Middle East and Europe in later Middle Age.

What then is to be made of a wooden comb that is decorated both with openwork similar to that of the ivory box and with ivory inlay not unlike that on gaming board (7849-1861). An attribution to Islamic Spain seems likely on a number of grounds. One is that the inlay on the comb resembles that on architectural woodwork made in Granada in the fourteenth century, when the city was still under Muslim rule. It must still be recognized, however, that the inlay on the comb is related to that on the game board since, Christian reconquest of Muslim Spain and – again like lustre – it seems to have been transmitted to Italy.

(Text from Palace and Mosque, p.130)

4229-1857