Pear-shaped Ewer with Rooster-Head Spout

For millennia, humans have delighted in transforming vessels through the addition of animal heads or appendages. From greater Iran, numerous examples similar to this one, dated or datable to the twelfth through the fourteenth century, have survived. Their precedents—silver ewers from Sasanian Iran and high-fired ceramics from the Tang and Song periods in China— demonstrate the ongoing dialogue between artists in western and eastern Asia. If the thermoluminescence analysis for this ewer is correct, then the dialogue likely continued into the twentieth century. Most of the known Iranian rooster-head ewers use linear decoration, in luster or underglaze painting, to articulate eye, coxcomb, wattle, beak, and neck ring. In contrast, the features of this bird are suggested only sculpturally. The white body of the ewer is embellished by three circular medallions with incised and pierced interlace motifs that remained watertight because they were filled with glaze. The once-clear glaze has degraded and become iridescent across large areas, partially obscuring the medallions and their pierced openings. Enlivening the otherwise subtle decoration, dabs of cobalt appear set like cabochon sapphires along the handle and run down from the coxcomb. A ewer of similar shape in the Louvre bears an inscription around the base suggesting that it was intended to hold wine. Put to this use, the Calderwood ewer would have been striking—the red liquid appearing dramatically through its pierced medallions.