A Nishapur Relief Cut-Glass Bottle, Persia, 9th Century

the clear glass relief-cut bottle with a layer of polychrome iridescence, the conical form neck with everted rim and rounded lip, decorated with two parallel lines and a curving stem with half-palmette leaves, the curved shoulder with two parallel stems below the neck, a band of high relief Kufic across the body

good condition considering age, some build up of dirt, as viewed.
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inscriptions

baraka wa ghibta wa surur wa (sic.) li-sahib[ihi] baraka

'Blessing and Felicity and Joy (and) to its owner, blessing'

This complex and refined glass bottle is an ambitious work of early relief-cut glass. It employs mould-blown and cutting techniques to produce a richly decorated object combining resonances of a classical Sasanian aesthetic, in its palmette garland, with a pronouncement of its Islamic context in its Arabic inscription.

Sherds with related cut-decoration of palmettes were excavated at Nishapur (Kröger 1995, pp.144-146). A bottle of closely related form and elaborate relief-cut decoration is in the David Collection, Copenhagen (von Folsach 2001, p.207, no.308; and, Blair and Bloom 2006, p.73, no.13). Another colourless bottle in the David Collection has a variant on this shape but incorporates Kufic into its relief-cut decoration (von Folsach 2001, p.209, no.312; and, Blair and Bloom 2006, p.75, no.15).

Several blown bottles of this form testify to its popularity in glass of this period (Goldstein 2005, pp.110-111, no.130, and 124-127, nos.152-155). It is paralleled in metalwork from Khurasan with both inlaid and chased examples (Pope and Ackerman 1938-9, Vol.VI, plate 1311 b and e). Ceramic examples are decorated in lustre (von Folsach, 2001, p.310, no.492). The prevalence of this form in Persian art, taken with the excavated finds at Nishapur, would suggest a Persian, or even Khurasanian, origin for this bottle. A further related bottle, in colourless glass, blown and relief-cut, is in the collection of the Corning Museum and is reputedly from Bojnurd in Khurasan province. It is yet more reason to propose a Khurasanian provenance for the present bottle, but with the similarity of works produced in Persia, Mesopotamia and Egypt in this colourless relief-cut glass it is necessarily an attribution only put forward tentatively.

This lot is accompanied by a scientific analysis certificate confirming a ninth century date of manufacture.