Published Catalogue Text: In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art , written 2013
6
Bowl with rooster and fish
Iraq, Basra, Abbasid period, 10th century[1]
Buff-colored earthenware painted with luster (silver and copper) over white lead alkali glaze opacified with tin
5.9 × 23.2 cm (2 5/16 × 9 1/8 in.)
2002.50.72
Published: McWilliams 2004, 3, 11, fig 2.
Repaired from about twenty fragments, but with only small losses, this bowl is decorated with two startled-looking animals— a rooster, and, in its beak, a fish. Their wide-eyed energy is sustained by other sharply angled elements of the design: fins and tail feathers, coxcomb, and fluttering scarf.[2] These creatures have long carried positive associations: the rooster, as the harbinger of dawn, symbolizes hope, while the fish suggests bounty. In religious contexts, the rooster also developed more specifically auspicious connotations: according to a popular epigram attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, he crows when he sees an angel; in Christian tradition, his invigorating sound recalls the faltering to their faith. The glazed base of this bowl bears an undecipherable inscription in Kufic script.
Mary McWilliams
[1] The bowl was last fired between 700 and 1200 years ago, according to the results of thermoluminescence analysis carried out by Oxford Authentication Ltd. in 2011.
[2] In Grube 1994, 38, cat. 25, Peter Morgan, referring to a bowl in the Khalili Collection, London, describes a similar adornment on a bird’s head as “the classical Sasanian imperial ribbon.”
