Goblet with riders

The goblet, in white glass, is straight sided from the base, then opens out suddenly for the upper third. This form is characteristic of a group of glasses which are judged to have been made towards the middle of the thirteenth century.

Depicted in a broad median frieze are three horsemen who are galloping towards large golden foliation. They are polo players wearing blue, red and white turbans and clothed in kaftans with bands of script on the top of the sleeves. Their mounts are in white, red-brown and black enamel. Here and there in the scene are threaded two gilt inscriptions on a red background laid down on the inside of the glass. They do not give us the name of the sponsor, which was the custom at this period. They are written in cursive script and are difficult to read.

The chosen iconography for this goblet is taken from the furusiyya (The Arts of the Muslim Knight), which deals with the art of horse riding and associated disciplines. Here it depicts a polo game, a sport practised in the Islamic world from the ninth century onwards. This noble sport, inspired by war on horseback with its ambushes and skirmishes, is perhaps a Persian invention from the Achaemenid period. The Mamelukes played it a lot. As for the modern name for polo, popularised by the English, it comes from the Tibetan pil-lu, which is the wood from which the mallet is made. Representations of this game are often found on princely items, notably on the medallions which decorated the copper bowls produced in Syria and in Egypt during the thirteenth century.

The fascination for these polychrome and gilded glasses felt by Western Christians, who only knew a few rare Byzantine examples, is well known. They were thought of as “wonders” and were doubtless sought after by the Palestine Crusaders. The Latin world, until the end of the thirteenth century had nothing similar to offer even if, in jewellery, the techniques of enamel on gold leaf of the cloisonné style ( ‘de plique’ enamel) were reaching Paris and of an exceptional quality. The enamelled and gilt glass produced by the Syrian workshops during the second half of the twelfth century, under the reign of the Ayyubids, gave the Muslim Near-East an economic supremacy until Venice, then Murano, succeeded in reproducing it towards 1290. Once they managed this, the Venetian workshops carried on the “Syrian” style. Venetian goblets decorated with European silver écus, but wreathed in pseudo-Arabic script, like the famous example in the British Museum which carries the Latin inscription Magister Aldrevandin Me Fecit (“Master Aldrevandin made me”), clearly shows this relationship[1]. In return, it is possible that Ayyubid and then Mameluke Syria produced glass for the Margheritas in Orvieto, Umbria (Italy). It was eventually used in the Christian liturgy or deposited in the Church treasuries.