A rare Ilkhanid engraved silver pail, Persia, 14th century

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Ex-private collection, France.

J. Kalsi, 'Understanding the origins of design' in Gulf News, 7 December 2012.

This bucket finds inspiration from a large group of twelfth-century buckets which were derived from the Etruscan situla (Roman for 'bucket'). Whilst the Etruscan original was a simple straight-sided, flat bottomed vessel, its Islamic counterpart became imbued with a more ornate Persian composition, developing a rounded body, flaring foot and decorative friezes.

This silver bucket has been the subject of a study by professor James Allan who notes that: “Objects of this form in base metal were used as bath pails, and this is the most likely use of this silver example. The bronze examples were cast and are almost always spherical in shape. However, lobed forms of vessel were popular in precious metal in the Persian world, appearing for example in Soghdian and early Islamic metalwork, where they were used for drinking cups” (Private report, 8 October 2012).  
Examples in bronze include the prominent Bobrinsky bucket and later Fould bucket, both named after their previous owners, now in the State Hermitage Museum (inv. nos. ИР-2268 and ИР-1668). Both were inlaid with silver and feature elaborate decorative repertoires that include figures and inscriptions and attributed to mid-thirteenth century Anatolia (see Piotrovsky and Rogers 2004, pp. 88-90, nos. 38 and 40). Another bucket engraved and inlaid with copper from the twelfth century, attributed to Eastern Persia or Afghanistan now in the David Collection, Copenhagen, inv. no. 32/2007 which also features a combination of knotted designs and a further example was sold in these rooms, 11 October 1990, lot 166. The Fould bucket has in fact been attributed to the Jazira, Northern Syria or possibly Anatolia in an article by A. A. Ivanov in which he notes a difference with the bucket's decorative repertoire, its arrangement in vertical stripes, faceted body and gilt ground; elements which are not found on Khurasani metalwork of the period (Ivanov 2004).

The finely incised design on this bucket comprises entwining split-palmettes, pseudo-Kufic and knotted motifs which find parallels not only in metalwork but also in manuscript illustration and ceramic-work of the period. See for example an early Ilkhanid Qur'an attributed to Abdallah al-Sayrafi, circa 1330 in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, Istanbul (inv. no. TIEM 487). 

This silver bucket is a fascinating and rare example of silverware from the Ilkhanid dynasty which echoes the already existing Perso-Islamic visual vocabulary. This is typical of the Ilkhanids, who through the so-called Pax-Mongolica, which covered the vast territorial expanses of the Mongol empire, set a peaceful stage for trade and cultural interaction that is evident in Ilkhanid artistic production.
 
This lot is accompanied by a metallurgical study carried out by Oxford Materials OMC and BegbrokeNano who provide services on behalf of Oxford University Department of Materials, R4047. This report concludes that the composition of the silver on the present bucket is consistent with the silver that was in circulation in the Ilkhanid period (1256-1353). For a copy of this report, please contact the department directly.