Curator's Pick: A Fantastic Beast with Dr. Filiz Çakır Phillip
#AntiquePorcelain"Dr. Filiz Çakır Phillip unleashes a fantastical beast kept in the Aga Khan Museum’s Collection.
Sphinxes, harpies, and simurghs are familiar sights in the visual art of Islam, appearing on diverse media including paper, textiles, metal, and ceramics. In contrast, the elephant-headed bird depicted on this fritware bowl from 13th-century Iran is one-of-a-kind. It leads us to speculate about which stories from Muslim societies’ oral traditions might have inspired the artisan. Could One Thousand and One Nights or the stories of Sindbad the Sailor help us uncover the origin of this marvellous creature?"
Hi, my name is Filiz Çakır Filif. I am curator at the Aga Khan Museum.
This Iranian bowl from the early 13th century with a fantastical elephant-headed creature is very fascinating in many different ways.
Its subject matter and technique are the foci of this curator's pick.
The elephant-headed bird depicted here on this bowl is a unique creature and is certainly evidence of the potter's vivid imagination.
It is difficult to determine it further due to lack of comparable examples.
This elephant-headed bird may be connected to contemporary literature known by the artisan.
Perhaps this fantastic creature was inspired by the mythological bird, Rok, in a story from One Thousand and One Nights,
and which is also mentioned in one of the stories of Sinbad the Sailor.
The lustre decoration of this bowl demonstrates the limitless creativity of the potters of Kasha.
The fantastical beasts such as siphenses, harpies, and simurks appear on surfaces of this sparkling, lustre-painted, underglazed type of ceramics of medieval Iran.
Lustre painting was made by compounding metal oxides to create bright yellows, browns, and other colours.
I want to take a moment to describe the process.
First, the vessel, no matter in which shape, would go through the process of the first firing.
The first firing is important to achieve because it gives the ceramic body its shape and stability.
The lustre technique is then applied before the process of a second firing to fix the colour onto the ceramic surface.
This particular technique of ceramic painting was introduced from either Iraq or Egypt to cities of Iran, such as Rai and Kasha.
Both cities were already established as well-known ceramic production centres for fruitware.
Kashan is a city in the northern part of Isfahan province of Iran, and the term for tile, kashi, in the Persian language is derived from the name of the city,
underlining the prominent place of its ceramic production between the 11th and 13th centuries.
For more details to this bowl, please see our website or visit our wonderful museum and its collection in person.
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