Last week’s posting on Yalda reminded me of a recent Saudi Aramco article explaining how all the commercial pistachio trees in California derive from just one ‘mother tree’, brought from Kerman. By 2010 – following the American Embassy ‘hostage crisis’ of 1979, and the subsequent embargo on Iranian pistachios – production in California apparently outstripped …
Professor Dick Davis spoke at SOAS recently – on the women in the Shahnameh. He’s counted fifty (that’s 50!) named women in the Shahnameh – as well as all the unnamed mothers, daughters and slavegirls. He specially noticed the huge differences between the women in the first and second halves of the book. In the …
Every day at dawn and dusk (and whenever a sick pilgrim gets healed), kettle-drums are beaten and long metal trumpets are blown in Mashhad. The 1910 photo here shows the naqqāra-ḵāna: the name used for the ensemble of musicians as well as the place where the performance takes place. Click here (and then on ‘live …
I couldnt believe my eyes when I saw Ahriman (as Goebbels) with serpents with the faces of Mussolini and Tojo growing out of his shoulders, egged on by Zahhak (as Hitler’s cook). Then Zahhak-Hitler dreams of the three warriors who will cause his demise (obviously: Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt). It’s all finished off by Kaveh, …
This week, it’s the viewings for the Islamic sales in London. It’s your chance to see high quality Islamic objects up close! If you’re nice, the sales ladies will probably even let you touch! There’s lots – but maybe the highlights for me include: At Sothebys (click here to get to the e-catalogue, then search …
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 …
This week’s Khalili Memorial lecture was entitled ‘The Cosmic Cup in Medieval and Later Persian Art’. Since there’s not enough space in one posting to go through everything that Dr Marianna Shreve Simpson talked about, this week’s blog will concentrate especially on the Shahnameh story of Bizhan and Manizheh (here in verse, here in prose), …
Robert Shirley, portrait before 1628. Wiki image Last week I included van Dyck’s painting of Robert Shirley dressed à la Persane. This week, when I was reading the (relatively new, go read it!) Carpets and Textiles in the Iranian World 1400-1700, I was reminded of another image of him. This is the one that was …
The exhibition of Courtly Textiles and Trade Goods now at Francesca Galloway’s gallery has some very special Safavid pieces, including a lovely silk velvet of a mother and child (with a delightful leopard), and the sort of long sash (it’s 3.8m) which became so fashionable abroad, especially in seventeenth century Poland. I’m going to focus, …
This week, I went to a fascinating seminar about the Shahnameh at Janet Rady Fine Art, focusing on different representations of the hero Rostam through the ages (click here for Fereydoun Ave’s very original take on this). I was reminded of my own recent posting here about Shahnameh recitations by the Bakhtiari, when Nick Jubber …