Bowl with Birds Circling an Inscription

Potters working during the reign of the Samanid dynasty in northeastern Iran and Central Asia produced some of the most impressive and distinctive wares in the history of Islamic art. One of their most successful decorative techniques involved the use of slips—colored clays in solution—both to envelop the reddish earthenware body of vessels and to add surface designs. The body of this bowl, for example, is covered completely in a whitish slip, with a lively design in olive green painted over it. The green color is produced by fine particles of a chromium compound. Within a rim decorated with running crescents appear two wide-eyed birds, positioned breast-to- tail, who pinwheel around an Arabic inscription in foliated Kufic that reads, “Blessing to him” (baraka lahu). On the exterior, three circles enclosing parallel diagonal lines alternate with three downward-pointing arrows. The crescents, pop-eyed animals, benevolent inscription, and circles echo designs on tenth-century monochrome lusterwares produced in Basra. Slip-painted imitations of Basra vessels seem to have been a specialty of the potters of Nishapur, in northeastern Iran. A clear glaze with a slight greenish tinge covers the interior and exterior of this bowl, including its beveled, slightly concave base. The vessel has been put back together from fragments, with painted plaster filling in losses in the wing of the inverted bird.