Bowl fragment
Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow Museums
About Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow Museums, Glasgow
Hegira 8th century / AD 14th century
1919.84.ah
Earthenware, slip-coated and glazed, with incised decoration.
Height 10.5 cm (max), width 15 cm (max)
Mamluk
Fustat, Egypt.
An earthenware fragment that formed the centre and part of the rim of a footed and steep-sided bowl, showing a roundel embellished with an incised arabesque decoration; on the rim can be seen fragments of a band of Arabic calligraphic text. The technique, known as sgraffito (an Italian word meaning to scratch), involves dipping the vessel into a lighter coloured liquefied clay, known as a slip. With the aid of a pointed tool, the pattern is scratched into the slip, revealing parts of the clay as the design is drawn. The vessel is then glazed and fired. The incised pattern creates contrast; it reveals the colour of the darker clay, while the spaces between the lines show the lighter slip. The glaze on this bowl is a transparent ochre-yellow colour. This type of vessel was less costly to make than coloured ceramics, and therefore fulfilled the demands of the less affluent customers, who had just as much aspiration and taste for glazed wares with decorative texts and patterns, as did the wealthier customers.
The city of Fustat continued to be an active commercial city during the Mamluk period (AH 647–922 / AD 1250–1517), although it had lost some of its fame to Cairo, which was established by the Mamluks and subsequently subsumed by her.
This was once part of an impressive steep-sided bowl, decorated using an incising method called sgraffito – to scratch. It was less costly to make such monochrome ceramics in comparison to multicoloured ceramics, which made them more affordable to comparatively less-affluent people.
Stylistic analysis: comparable examples have been found in Fustat, Egypt, dating back to the 8th / 14th century.
Purchased by the Museum in 1919.
Comparable examples have been found in Fustat, Egypt, dating back to the 8th / 14th century.
Fehervari, G., Ceramics of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, London, 2000.
Hillenbrand, R., Islamic Art and Architecture, London, 1999.
Philon, H., Early Islamic Ceramics: Ninth to Late Twelfth Centuries, Athens, 1980.
Noorah Al-Gailani "Bowl fragment" in Discover Islamic Art, Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://islamicart.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=object;ISL;uk;Mus04;22;en
Prepared by: Noorah Al-GailaniNoorah Al-Gailani
Noorah Al-Gailani is Curator for Islamic Civilisations at Glasgow Museums, Scotland. With a BA in Interior Design from the College of Fine Arts, Baghdad University and three years' experience in design and folk art preservation, she moved to the UK in 1992. On completing her MA in Museum Studies at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London in 1994, she worked as Project Officer at the Grange Museum of Community History documenting the presence of Muslim communities in the London Borough of Brent. In 1995 she was Assistant Curator, Ancient Monuments Laboratory, English Heritage, and in 1996 became Curator for John Wesley's House and the Museum of Methodism in London. She co-authored The Islamic Year: Surahs, Stories and Celebrations (Stroud: Hawthorn Press, 2002) for non-Muslim children. Since 2003 she has been based at The Burrell Collection in Glasgow, working across the city's museums to interpret Islamic art and culture, ancient and modern, through research, exhibitions and educational activities.
Copyedited by: Mandi GomezMandi Gomez
Amanda Gomez is a freelance copy-editor and proofreader working in London. She studied Art History and Literature at Essex University (1986–89) and received her MA (Area Studies Africa: Art, Literature, African Thought) from SOAS in 1990. She worked as an editorial assistant for the independent publisher Bellew Publishing (1991–94) and studied at Bookhouse and the London College of Printing on day release. She was publications officer at the Museum of London until 2000 and then took a role at Art Books International, where she worked on projects for independent publishers and arts institutions that included MWNF’s English-language editions of the books series Islamic Art in the Mediterranean. She was part of the editorial team for further MWNF iterations: Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean Virtual Museum and the illustrated volume Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean.
True to its ethos of connecting people through the arts, MWNF has provided Amanda with valuable opportunities for discovery and learning, increased her editorial experience, and connected her with publishers and institutions all over the world. More recently, the projects she has worked on include MWNF’s Sharing History Virtual Museum and Exhibition series, Vitra Design Museum’s Victor Papanek and Objects of Desire, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s online publication 2 or 3 Tigers and its volume Race, Nation, Class.
MWNF Working Number: UK4 27
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