Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Ceramics, Room 137, The Curtain Foundation Gallery

Bottle

about 1650 (made), 1800-75 (mounting)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

In 19th century Qajar Iran, before a contemporary export market had emerged, a commercial market for historical artefacts arose, fuelled by Western collectors and museums. Historically, fragmentary material culture, particularly ceramics, including 17th century Safavid fritware, and Chinese porcelain, which had been damaged through use, was often repaired or re-purposed with metal mounts, frequently brass, to replace missing spouts, handles, lids and necks. Many examples were acquired for the Victoria and Albert Museum by Major-General Sir Robert Murdoch Smith (1835-1900) in Iran in the 1870s and 1880s. Among these is a large corpus embellished with a minutely engraved repertoire of figures from 19th century Iranian visual culture: youthful Qajar princes, veiled women, dervishes, acrobats, as well as monstrous supernatural beings, known as divs, and a range of bizarre humanoid creatures. These mounted vessels of Safavid fritware are therefore couched in a Qajar environment and re-fitted according to contemporary taste.


Object details

Category
Object type
Materials and techniques
Fritware, underglaze painted in blue; brass, engraved
Brief description
Bottle, fritware, painted in underglaze blue and black, Iran, about 1650; later brass mounts.
Physical description
Bottle of fritware, with bulbous body and elongated neck, mounted with chased brass to hide the broken neck. Painted in underglaze blue and black, respectively from the neck down to the shoulder with bands of plantain leaves, reserved-painted panels, arabesques and ruyi heads. On the body are two cavorting deer, one landing bird and two more in flightanimate the scene which includes Kraak clouds, small birds, weeping willows, large baulstrades and branches. A band of ribboned panelsl with plain dividers, runs round the bottom between two plain bands. The style of the flowers and weeping willows strike an odd note on a conventional imitation Kraak setting. Imitation Chinese square mark in blue.
Dimensions
  • Height: 26.4cm
  • Diameter: 21.3cm
Style
Production
Register
Subjects depicted
Summary
In 19th century Qajar Iran, before a contemporary export market had emerged, a commercial market for historical artefacts arose, fuelled by Western collectors and museums. Historically, fragmentary material culture, particularly ceramics, including 17th century Safavid fritware, and Chinese porcelain, which had been damaged through use, was often repaired or re-purposed with metal mounts, frequently brass, to replace missing spouts, handles, lids and necks. Many examples were acquired for the Victoria and Albert Museum by Major-General Sir Robert Murdoch Smith (1835-1900) in Iran in the 1870s and 1880s. Among these is a large corpus embellished with a minutely engraved repertoire of figures from 19th century Iranian visual culture: youthful Qajar princes, veiled women, dervishes, acrobats, as well as monstrous supernatural beings, known as divs, and a range of bizarre humanoid creatures. These mounted vessels of Safavid fritware are therefore couched in a Qajar environment and re-fitted according to contemporary taste.
Bibliographic reference
Crowe, Yolande. Persia and China: Safavid blue and white ceramics in the Victoria & Albert Museum 1501-1738. London: Thames and Hudson, 2002, Cat. 85, p. 88.
Collection
Accession number
1091-1876

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Record createdMarch 16, 2009
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