A rare Timurid openwork bronze Lantern

Persia, 15th Century

Footnotes

This remarkable bronze lantern, with its openwork decoration of scrolling vines and fleshy palmettes, is an unusual example of Timurid metalwork. It would originally have been suspended from the four small ring projecting from the upper body, with the inside accessed through the 'doors' on one side. The shape of this piece, combined with the doors, evokes an architectural feel without directly referencing any specific type of building. The general form is echoed in Ottoman metalwork, and example of which is now in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (Allan, J., Metalwork Treasures from the Islamic Courts, London and Doha, 2002). However, it would appear that this lantern was made further east, in Persia. Candlesticks with similar vegetal decoration, albeit with calligraphic bands and made of tinned copper rather than bronze, have been attributed to the 15th Century and are in the Iran Bastan Museum, and the David Collection, Copenhagen.(A.S. Melikian-Chirvani, Islamic Metalwork from the Iranian World, London, 1982, fig. 60; von Folsach, K., Islamic Art in the David Collection, Copenhagen, 2001, p.326 ). Another of this type was sold at Christie's, Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds, 13th April 2010, lot 78. For a full discussion of Mongol and Timurid metalwork in architectural settings, see Mols, L.E.M., Mamluk Metalwork Fittings in Their Artistic and Architectural Context, Delft, 2006, pp. 28-31.