Albarello with fleur-de-lys

This pharmacy jar (albarello), with a cylindrical, slightly concave form, ends in a narrowed neck with a strongly curled lip. The “blue and white” decoration is divided into banded layers by lines and strips. In the large median band there are three shields with an azure field furnished with a white fleur-de-lys on a background of foliage and birds in flight. The neck, the upper band and the base are ornamented with a flowery garland. This decoration which is strongly reminiscent of China, ties in to the aesthetic that was developed in Mameluke Syria at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

During the digs that were carried out in houses in Damascus and Hama (Syria), numerous shards of Chinese type “blue and white” ceramics were found. The oldest ones date back to the end of the fourteenth century, the period when the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) had restarted the work in the Jingdezhen kilns, in south central China. The Chinese “blue and white” porcelain itself brought about various exchanges with Islamic countries. The mineral cobalt, known as “Mohammedan Blue” or “Persian Blue”, had been supplied by Persia for a long time and it was probably the workshops of Kushan that gave the Chinese the technique of underglaze painting as well as certain motifs.  In return, the Chinese “blue and white” would inspire the Damascene potters. This Chinese repertory of motifs – lotus flowers, peonies, herons and cranes – was disseminated on all types of media, under the Mamelukes.

On the albarello that we are looking at, these Chinese themes are juxtaposed with pointed shields. Although these are rare, shields of a European type are not unknown in Islamic lands: they are found amongst the Nasrid and the Mameluke emirates, like the fleur-de-lys which they contain. The latter, which appears for the first time under the Zangids[1], takes on a particular form in the East: it has no pistol. It is showing this particularity that it was adopted as an insignia by the Sultan Qalâ’ûn, as we can see on a famous jar coming from the al-Nûrî Hospice[2]. The fleur-de-lys on the albarello is different. Everything leads us to believe that it is the Florentine giglio and that this piece was an order sent from the Tuscan city to the Syrian capital.

In Islamic countries, these pharmacy pots were being made throughout the Middle Ages, whether for export or for local use. Examples dating back to the 10^th and 11^th centuries have been uncovered in central Asia[3]. Syria is not necessarily the origin of the type of vessel. Even so, it is Syrian albarelli that, produced under the Ayyubid, for example in the north of the country at Raqqa, then, under the Mamelukes, in the workshops of Damascus, were the most commonly exported to Europe. In Spain, in the fourteenth century, the workshops at Valencia, Manises and Malaga would copy them by giving them a lustre finish. These Hispano-Moorish albarelli, which were often called “damascene”, would in turn be exported to England, Italy and even to Egypt. Nonetheless, the albarelli from Damascus continued to be exported to the West, especially to Florence, which ordered them for its hospices.

Nor did the great families shun this useful type of pottery. In the inventory of the belongings of the king of France, Charles V (r. 1368-1380), there is listed “a pot from Damascus with fresh ginger”; in that of the Duke of Burgundy, “a blue and white Damascus pot with a lid”. In the inventory of Cosmo Medici’s collection, three albarelli from Damascus are mentioned for the year 1456. We can glimpse at the Mediterranean trade of medicines and spices through these much travelled objects.

[2]  Kuwait, private collection, I/691. Sultan Qalâ’ûn was treated and cured in Damascus at the al-Nûrî Hospice in 1283. He ordered its renovation.

[3] Modelled in clay, decorated with Kufic lettering painted on white slip and under a transparent glaze, these first examples were uncovered at Afrasiab-Samarcande (Uzbekistan). The region of Amol, in Iran notably, produced them from the 11th century, as shown by the albarello with a waist of spoked hearts now kept in the Art Institute of Chicago, inv. 27.419.