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This item has been added to the Database within the Explore Islamic Art Collections project. Information is available in: English, Arabic.

Name of Object:

Lamp

Location:

Los Angeles, United States of America

Holding Museum:

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

About Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles

Date of Object:

Hegira mid-8th century / AD mid-14th century

Museum Inventory Number:

50.28.4

Material(s) / Technique(s):

Glass, free-blown and tooled, applied handles, enamelled and gilded

Dimensions:

Height 37.5cm, Diameter 29.2cm

Period / Dynasty:

Mamluk

Provenance:

Egypt or Syria

Description:

The Mamluks were prodigious patrons of the arts who took a special interest in building religious foundations, which they supplied with all manner of beautiful furnishings, including lamps such as this. According to the inscriptions on the lower part of the lamp, it was commissioned "By order of the most noble authority, the Exalted, the Lordly, the Masterful, holder of the sword, Shaykhu al-Nasiri", a former mamluk of the Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad. On the upper and lower sections of the lamp is Shaykhu’s heraldic device or blazon in the form of a circular medallion bearing a red cup set between a red and a black bar. He is known to have built a mosque and a khanqa in Cairo in the mid-eighth/mid-fourteenth century, and this lamp was most likely made for one of these structures.

How date and origin were established:

The lamp’s inscriptions indicate that it was made on the order of the Mamluk Amir Shaykhu al-Nasiri, presumably for either the mosque or khanqah he had built in Cairo in the mid-fourteenth century.

How Object was obtained:

Mosque or khanqah, Cairo, built in Hegira 750/1349 AD and Hegira 756/1355 AD, respectively, of Amir Shayku al-Nasiri (died Hegira 758/AD 1357). Lucien Sauphar (unknown dates), Galerie Charpentier, Paris, until 1936 (sold to); A. Seligmann, Rey & Co, Paris, until 1950. Collection of William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), San Simeon, California, until 1950 (gifted to); LACMA, William Randolph Hearst Collection.

How provenance was established:

Lamps of this type seem to have been produced exclusively for Mamluk religious foundations.

Selected bibliography:

Hess, Catherine, The Arts of Fire: Islamic Influences on Glass and Ceramics of the Italian Renaissance, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2004: 86.
Komaroff, Linda, Beauty and Identity: Islamic Art from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2016: 64, 72, 73.
Komaroff, Linda, Islamic Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Rev. ed., Los Angeles: Museum Associates, 2005: 30, fig. 27.
Levkoff, Mary L., Hearst the Collector, New York: Abrams; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2008: 192-93.

Citation of this web page:

LACMA Staff "Lamp" in Explore Islamic Art Collections. Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://islamicart.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=object;EPM;us;Mus21;11;en

Prepared by: LACMA Staff

MWNF Working Number: US1 11

RELATED CONTENT

 Artistic Introduction

Islamic Dynasties / Period

Mamluks


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