LOT 1103

Large Silver Dish with Ibexes

3RD-6TH CENTURY A.D. OR EARLIER

14 1/2 in. (800 grams, 37 cm wide).

A finely hammered bowl, the surface punched with vegetal and zoomorphic decoration comprising standing rams or mouflons enclosed within a circle, spear-shaped leaves separating the figures, low foot; the engraving possibly later.

UK private collection before 2000.
Acquired on the UK art market.
Property of a London gentleman.

Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffaele D’Amato.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by search certificate number no.12169-220737.

Cf. Grabar, O., Late Antique and Early Mediaeval Arts of Luxury from Iran: August-September 1967, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, University of Michigan, 1967; Gunter, C., Jett, P., Ancient Iranian Metalwork in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art, Mainz, 1992, figs.20, 21; for discussion on ram and mouflon figures in the Sassanian art see Brunner, L., Sasanian Stamp Seals in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, 1978, pp.91-92.

The plate exhibits a typical hammered form, and was probably reinforced with an organic base. The subject of the decoration, rams or mouflons with the head facing right or left, is a theme found on Sassanid art and is also visible on a decorated silver and gilt vessel of the Sackler Gallery collection (Gunter, Jett, no.21). Decoration in the form of such animal enclosed in a medallion appears in the central exterior roundel of a silver bowl in the Detroit Institute of Arts (Grabar, 1967, p.125, no.41).