A rare Umayyad or early Abbasid lead-glazed pottery vessel, Iran or Near East, 7th-9th century

the body of moulded bombé form fashioned from two oblong bowl-shaped sections luted together with a trail of crimped clay, a short spout with everted lip and applied strap-form handle, decorated with relief-moulded panels of palmette and split-palmette scrolls separated by inverted V-form panels, the ground partially hatched

This highly unusual vessel is a rare example of relief-moulded pottery from the early Islamic period.

The moulded decoration with split-palmette scrolls relates to a small and well-documented group of pottery dishes with raised interlaced designs classified by Lane and others as "lead-glazed relief-ware", Mesopotamia, 9th century (Lane 1947, p.12, plate 5B).  The Mesopotamian group is noted for its lustrous sheen which is absent here. The glaze on the present piece has a distinct green tone masking a buff-coloured body - features shared by three dishes in the al-Sabah Collection attributed by Watson to eastern Iran (see Watson 2004, p.165). Furthermore, wares of related design and technique have also been found at Susa, as well as fragments recovered from the industrial quarter at Fustat in Egypt (Lane, op. cit., plates 4 and 5) suggesting that relief-moulded wares were probably made at a number of different centres.

Whilst the exact place of production remains unclear, a date around the 7th-9th century can be posited with confidence based on analogues in fashionable Tang lead-glazed relief-wares which were traded along the Silk Road at this time and were clearly a contributing factor in reinforcing the vogue for relief-moulded wares in Islamic lands.