Bowl with motifs of a castle, birds and female figures

The fragments of this bowl were discovered in the debris around the kilns of the pottery workshops in Paterna during archaeological digs on the site carried out by Professor González Martí in 1907 and later on during campaigns led by V. G. Novella and J. Almenar.  The material gathered from these digs was acquired by la Junta de Museos in 1922 and the pieces were partially reconstituted in the museum restoration workshops of Barcelona.

This bowl is illustrative of the ceramic production of the Valencia region after the Christian conquest of al-Andalus. Here the Oriental influence has been superimposed by what are termed ‘Gothic-Mudejar’ motifs.   

The colours of green and brown, already present in productions from the 9th to 10th centuries in the Orient and later in the Maghreb and al-Andalus, were still those encountered in the Valencia region during the Christian Dominion. The outlines of the motifs are traced in a brown manganese oxide, copper oxide being used for the green. Its white ground is punctuated by groups of three small dots.

 The ornamentation gives the illusion of symmetry, inherited undoubtedly from Islamic art; the figures face each other and the decoration appears to fill in the empty space and meld with the frame. A three-storey brick tower, crowned by merlons in the shape of the tips of arrows, takes up the centre of the bowl. It can be compared to the actual towers that rise above the city of Paterna—a motif that recurs frequently in the art of the city. On the first level, two openings in the form of trilobate arches shelter two women facing each other. Seated in the Oriental style, their tunics open over their breasts and wearing crowns over their long hair, these figures recall the queens of Iran and Mesopotamia. In their raised hands they hold disks—musical instruments, perhaps, or small mirrors, the accessories frequently used in the Christian iconography of the period to designate luxury. This is a recurrent theme in Paterna earthenware. While in part the heritage of Islamic productions, these motifs are invested with symbols that point to another cultural context. The tower is flanked by two birds above which are very stylized and quickly drawn vegetal motifs that evoke fleuron. One of the winged creatures has a long plume; it may be a hoopoe, a bird frequently seen in the pottery of al-Andalus.

Figures face each other here and there along a vertical axis which is an ancient Oriental theme that we see on many different supports: textiles[1], ivories…. We come across this design on Middle-Eastern objects in metal from the early 13th century[2]. The closest example we have of the design and motifs of this particular bowl comes from a 13th–century Syrian object of an enamelled glass with two figures looking out of a tower.

This piece is clearly linked to other ‘green-and-manganese ware’ discovered at digs in Paterna, as well as to the two-tone contemporary ceramics produced in Manisès (Valencia region), in Teruel and in Catalonia. Paterna’s ceramics, in which human figures abound, has notably influenced the productions of Catalonia and the Balearic islands.

[2] Atil, E.; Chase, W. T.; Jett, P., Islamic Metalwork in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985, p. 120, n° 46.