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Lot 36

A rare Mamluk underglaze painted pottery Tile
Syria, first half of 15th Century

10 April 2008, 10:00 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £36,000 inc. premium

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A rare Mamluk underglaze painted pottery Tile
Syria, first half of 15th Century

square, decorated in blue on a white ground with a central cypress tree flanked by palm trees and confronting ewers
25 x 25 cm.

Footnotes

Provenance:
Acquired in Paris, 1970.

Whilst 14th Century potters were content merely to copy Chinese originals, by the mid-15th Century they had achieved a remarkable Sino-Islamic synthesis in their work; this superb tile is a perfect example of that process. No exact comparison can be drawn in terms of its size but stylistically these trees and ewers are very similar to those depicted on smaller hexagonal Mamluk tiles dated to 1425 in the Victoria and Albert Museum (see, Arthur Lane, A guide to the collection of Tiles, London, 1939, plate 12) and in The British Museum (see Venetia Porter, Islamic Tiles, London 1999, fig.85). A square Mamluk tile decorated with an architectural feature and leafy tendrils was sold at Sotheby's, Arts of the Islamic World, 3rd May 2001, lot 116.

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