A Kashan underglaze-painted pottery bowl Persia, 12th/ 13th Century


of deep rounded form with flattened sides on a splayed foot, decorated in cobalt-blue and black on a white ground with radiating panels containing inscriptions and vegetal interlace, the interstices with palmette motifs, the exterior with band of inscription to the rim, below panels containing palmette motifs 20 cm. diam.
|Inscriptions: to the interior, a quatrain in Persian; to the exterior, the same quatrain, followed by a very popular benedictory couplet and benedictory terms.For other pieces where the quatrain appears, see M. Bahrami, Gurgan Faiences, Cairo, 1949, p. 120, no.8 (one dated 613/1216); E. Grube, Cobalt and Lustre, The Nasser D.Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, vol. IX, 1994, cat. 272 (the text in lustre) and O. Pancaroglu, Perpetual Glory, Medieval Islamic Ceramics from the Harvey B. Plotnick Collection, 2007, cat 91 (the first quatrain around the rim).