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Qantara - Albarello with decorative inscription
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Qantara Qantara

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Albarello with decorative inscription


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  • Title/name : Albarello with decorative inscription
  • Production place : Syria, Damascus
  • Date / period : End of the 14th century
  • Materials and techniques : Siliceous ceramic with painted decoration under glaze
  • Dimensions : H. 36 cm, D. 25 cm
  • Conservation town : Sèvres
  • Conservation place : Musée national de la céramique
  • Inventory number : MNC 8386
  • Required notices, acquisition, donation, legacy, deposit : Legs Davilliers 1885

 

This Syrian albarello with a blue and white decoration, from the Mameluke era, is exceptional due to its size and the grandeur of its decoration. The piece, which sits on a pedestal, presents a cylindrical profile which is very slightly narrowed around the middle. The neck, here very short, ends in a rolled lip which allows for a lid or covering to be attached. The body is decorated throughout with an Arabic inscription in cobalt blue, whose letters, with very tall strokes, stand out against a background of leafy vegetation. We must recall that the Italian word albarello is itself evolved, after passing through the Latin, from the Arabic al-birâm (plural: al-burmâ), derived from the verb barâma: “to roll, turn over”.

With the exception of the pedestal, the siliceous paste has been covered with a white slip on which were painted letters and foliage in cobalt oxide. A transparent alkaline glaze protects the whole. In Cairo, a great number of pot shards belonging to this group of Syro-Egyptian ceramics with a blue and white decoration and bearing signatures, have been found. This bowl, together with a small ceramic animal in the Damascus Museum made with the same technique (Syrian digs of the 13th and 14th centuries), came to confirm the existence of this production on Syrian soil.

In this piece, the Chinese influences, usually frequent in this type of production, is overshadowed by the large inscription in Arabic whose characters cover the body from top to bottom. Difficult to read, they have been given several interpretations. That proposed by Mr El-Habib is fairly poetic; that of L.Kalus, with a more medical bias, makes direct reference to sexual impotence. If this interpretation is accurate, the albarello must have contained an aphrodisiac. It is possible that the ravages caused by the Great Plague in the 14th century were favourable to the development of a marginal medicine that was accompanied by magic formulae. Certain of them may well have been reproduced on the pharmacy pots. A connection can be made between the inscriptions of the albarello in Sèvres and that on the body of a Mameluke vase in the Louvre[1], also attributed to the Syro-Egyptian workshops of the 14th century and which is similarly obscure and divinatory. Whatever the case, these formulae leant much prestige to the contents, especially in the West where they remained mysterious. It is easy to understand why the Hispano-Moorish pharmacy vases and pots, manufactured in Valencia or Malaga, often copied the Arabic calligraphy and the “Damascene” style and why the albarelli of Damascus, when you could get them to Europe, were prized above those of other centres of production.

NOTE

[1] MAO 618, see description sheet

BIBLIOGRAPHY RELATED TO THE ITEM

Arts de l’Islam des origines à 1700 dans les collections publiques françaises, cat. expo., Paris, 1971, RMN, n° 69.

The Arts of Islam, London, 1976, p234-235, n° 276.

REFERENCE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lane, A., Later Islamic Pottery, London, 1947, Faber and Faber.

Soustiel, J. La céramique islamique, Paris, 1985, Vilo, p.228.




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