A GARRUS-WARE POTTERY BOWL WITH LIONESS
PERSIA, 12th/ 13th CENTURY
Estimate: £2,000 - £3,000
Auction: Islamic Art | Lots 1 to 66 | 12 June at 10am
Description
carved and decorated in brown on a white ground, with a prancing lioness with contour scrolling vegetal designs, four green vertical splashes
Dimensions
19cm (7 ½in) diameter
Provenance
Stamped with initials and inv. no. ‘D.W. 34/66’. (Possibly Dismas Widmann, Essen, Germany)
Private UK Collection.
Footnote
The prancing heraldic lioness takes up the whole space of the bowl. A comparable bowl is in the Art Institute of Chicago, inventory no. 1953.322; and, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, inventory no. C.45-1935. The latter one has a human face as opposed to a Lioness face. For another example, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, see Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery, London, 1947, pl. 33b. Arthur Lane notes that the commonest ‘shape [of this type] was a heavy flat-footed conical bowl with curved-rim’, which correctly describes the shape of this bowl.