DOI Heft:
No. 296 (November 1917)
DOI Artikel:Early Persian ceramics
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21264#0076
Early Persian Ceramics
“AVIGNON! THE POPE’S VILLA” BY J. B. C. COROT
(See preceding article)
EARLY PERSIAN CERAMICS
“ Once more within the Potter’s house alone
I stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay.
Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small.
That stood along the floor and by the Wall:
And some loquacious vessels were: And some
Listen’d perhaps, but never talk’d at all.
Said one among them—■' Surely not in vain.
My substance of the Common Earth was ta’en,
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke.
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth.’ ”
IT is a singular coincidence that at a moment
when public appreciation has revived a
taste for the mystic poems of Omar
actual specimens from the potter’s hand,
akin to those that occupied so prominent a
place in his song, should for the first time be
presented to us—shards that, buried in the
desert sands, have by chance failed to return to
“ shapeless earth ” and have after many genera-
tions been unearthed almost in their pristine
condition, whilst in many cases the soil under
which they have been buried has added an
inimitable lustre to them.
Is it too fanciful a possibility to surmise that,
maybe, among these drinking-cups, contempo-
raneous as they undoubtedly are with the poet,
may have been the actual one which, when he
touched it with his lip, “ with fugitive articula-
tion answered him ” ? Be that as it may, the
present generation is for the first time so for-
tunate as to see not only the actual types
of which the great poet-philosopher of Persia
wrote, but also autocrats of the potter’s wheel—
60
vases that once were filled with roses and
flagons that held generous wines. These bowls,
vases, and pitchers, products of a far different
civilization from ours, in their graceful form,
enchanting colour and glaze, in their naive
yet grandiose conception, make a strong appeal
to our aesthetic sense.
The wares illustrated here belong to the
prosperous and interesting period which com-
menced with the occupation of Persia by the
armies of the first Caliphs and ended with the
last Mongolian invasion in the fourteenth
century, and they belong to a collection of
I. EARLY PERSIAN BOWL, SASSANIAN PERIOD
(DIAMETER 7 INCHES)
“AVIGNON! THE POPE’S VILLA” BY J. B. C. COROT
(See preceding article)
EARLY PERSIAN CERAMICS
“ Once more within the Potter’s house alone
I stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay.
Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small.
That stood along the floor and by the Wall:
And some loquacious vessels were: And some
Listen’d perhaps, but never talk’d at all.
Said one among them—■' Surely not in vain.
My substance of the Common Earth was ta’en,
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke.
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth.’ ”
IT is a singular coincidence that at a moment
when public appreciation has revived a
taste for the mystic poems of Omar
actual specimens from the potter’s hand,
akin to those that occupied so prominent a
place in his song, should for the first time be
presented to us—shards that, buried in the
desert sands, have by chance failed to return to
“ shapeless earth ” and have after many genera-
tions been unearthed almost in their pristine
condition, whilst in many cases the soil under
which they have been buried has added an
inimitable lustre to them.
Is it too fanciful a possibility to surmise that,
maybe, among these drinking-cups, contempo-
raneous as they undoubtedly are with the poet,
may have been the actual one which, when he
touched it with his lip, “ with fugitive articula-
tion answered him ” ? Be that as it may, the
present generation is for the first time so for-
tunate as to see not only the actual types
of which the great poet-philosopher of Persia
wrote, but also autocrats of the potter’s wheel—
60
vases that once were filled with roses and
flagons that held generous wines. These bowls,
vases, and pitchers, products of a far different
civilization from ours, in their graceful form,
enchanting colour and glaze, in their naive
yet grandiose conception, make a strong appeal
to our aesthetic sense.
The wares illustrated here belong to the
prosperous and interesting period which com-
menced with the occupation of Persia by the
armies of the first Caliphs and ended with the
last Mongolian invasion in the fourteenth
century, and they belong to a collection of
I. EARLY PERSIAN BOWL, SASSANIAN PERIOD
(DIAMETER 7 INCHES)