Cast brass ewer with a palmette thumb-rest, Iran (Khorasan), 8th-10th century.

The ewer is cast in bronze and has a ovoid-shaped body on a low slanting foot. The waisted neck is separated from the main body by a thick rib halfway up. There is engraved decoration sparsely inlaid with copper. Heads of mythical birds encircle the neck, that had copper discs for eyes. Ewer has crozier shaped handle, the side facing the body is flat and decorated with five hemishperical beads. A palmette-shaped thumb-rest rises from the upper part of the handle. The neck is slightly ribbed. Engraved double arches with lotus-buds at their interstices form two bands at the top and bottom of these ribs. Overall patina dull olive yellow.

By its elegant form, this pear-shaped bronze ewer with a large thumb-rest in the shape of a palmette relates to a group of less than seven pieces, which combine the Byzantine and Sasanian traditions. These ewers are all thought to have been made in the first centuries of Islam. The only one with an inscription is in the Museum of Tbilisi, in Georgia: it mentions the name of the artisan (Yazid) and the place of production (Basra), and the date, which has been read by some as 688-689, and by others as 882-883. Previously it had been assumed that such ewers were made in Khurasan or Central Asia, but on the basis of this inscription it likely that they should be reattributed to Abbasid Iraq. Ewers made in Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) in the 10th and 11th centuries have a foreshortened version of the shape of these early ewers, and were perhaps modelled on imports that originated in the Abbasid world.

A striking feature of this ewer is its dramatic sinous handle. Its visual impact is enhanced by the bold thumb-rest in the form of a palmette or stylised tree.

Ewers with pear-shaped bodies, as here, were produced in Iran in the centuries following the Islamic conquest in the 7th century. They continued the general form of metal ewers made by Iranian metalworkers under the Sasanian dynasty (ruled about AD 224 to 631) that preceded the Islamic conquest.

434-1906