Last week, the blog focused on the story of Bizhan and Manizheh and how it is represented on the Freer beaker. This week, a little more from Dr Marianna Shreve Simpson’s fascinating Khalili Lecture.
After saying that she thought that a mina’i (overglaze enamel ceramic) fragment in the Khalili collection also showed scenes from the Bizhan and Manizheh story; Dr Shreve Simpson went on to talk about two mina’i bowls – one in Doha and one in Madrid. Unfortunately I don’t have images of either of these.
But I thought you shouldn’t miss hearing about her detective work.
The Freer beaker is a masterpiece. Between 1911 and 1914, it was sold more than once, and published in several catalogues. All of the illustrations show the same partial view of the beaker – last week I talked about how you have to rotate it in your hand to be able to see the whole story. Even Google Art still shows only one view.
However, what Dr Shreve Simpson noticed was that both the Doha and Madrid bowls show only the scenes from the Bizhan and Manizheh story that were included in the early catalogues. These are repeated, with an old-fashioned Orientalist feeling for what was often described as the ‘typically Islamic’ horror vacui – or compulsion to fill every space with ornament – and a complete disregard for the other half of the story that is supposed to be being portrayed.
Dr Shreve Simpson was, of course, not impolite enough to say right out that the Doha and Madrid pieces are fakes; but she did note that (just like the fakes highlighted by the Ashmolean) one of them, at least, seems – on close inspection – to be made up of fragments that might not all be from the same source.