Dish with boat

This dish made out of pink paste has a flared shape with a slightly rounded inner surface and a curved profile. The rim is everted. Its two sides are covered with a cream-white opaque glaze. The decoration is mainly in dark blue and manganese brown was used to outline the rim of the piece. This somewhat muted range of colours is similar to that used in Syria and Egypt during the same period.

A ship with wind-filled sails, whose ropes are represented by lines, is depicted on a background filled with dots and fine rinceaux. A sailor, under a stylised seabird, appears in the boat. In the lower section are two rows of stylised fish in the form of arabesques.

The theme of the ship is also found on another piece from the qasaba[1], but it is not the same boat, which shows that rather frequent use was made of the motif.

The production techniques and colours of this piece are very similar to those of ceramics produced throughout the Maghreb and in Muslim Spain. Nothing, for the time being, enables a thirteenth-century piece from Marrakech to be distinguished from a piece from Tunis, Tlemcen or Valencia produced during the same period. This indicates the artistic uniqueness of this geographic area and conveys the intensity of the trade relations between the various countries. Moreover, the blue of Hafsid ceramics is cobalt oxide-based, a product not found in Ifriqiya and that most likely came from Morocco or Germany, major suppliers of the ore. This does not, however, rule out the existence of ceramics specific to a certain region.

The piece was probably produced locally, despite the similarities with Andalusian ceramics. The relationship with many pieces made in these various regions is also accentuated by the use of the boat theme, a theme common to the entire Mediterranean basin from the Middle Ages to the modern era, conveying the importance of that sea, a source of wealth and trade as well as a symbol of adventures and discoveries. The theme is thus also found on Italian, Andalusian, North African, Egyptian[2] and Syrian ware. One of the oldest prototypes is most probably the tenth-century lustreware dish with boat found in Bahnassa, Egypt[3]. The bacino with the green and brown boat comes from a wall of the church of San Piero a Grado in Pisa and was probably produced in the workshops of Majorca[4], also constitutes an early example of the use of this motif. Another dish[5], depicting a boat without sails with eight rowers, appears to be from Ifriqiya or Majorca. The boat theme became more common on the Andalusian ceramics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It features on a lustreware bowl depicting a ship under a fish, produced in Valencia and now in Berlin, as well as a ninth-century dish with metallic reflections decorated with a Christian boat, on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. 486-1864).

Note also the presence on this dish of the fish motif, which has a certain prophylactic character. Very old in the Tunisian decorative repertory, particularly since the advent of the Christian era, it was reused in the decoration of the dish with fish found in Cap Bon, at Henchir Tollout de Bir Drasen, which most probably dates from the Almohad period (eleventh–twelfth centuries). It also appears in Fatimid iconography[6] and centuries later in the Ottoman ceramics of Iznik.

[2] An Egyptian shard decorated with a boat, dating from the late twelfth–early thirteenth century, in siliceous paste with painted decoration under transparent glaze, was discovered during excavations of Fustāt and is now in the Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo (inv. 5379/25).

[3] Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo, inv. 7900.

[4] Bacino with ship, Majorca, Spain, early eleventh century, earthenware with glazed decoration on slip or glaze (?), Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa, inv. 19.

[5]Early eleventh century, Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa, inv. 59.