LOT 0236

Sogdian Silver Cup with Incised Design

7TH-8TH CENTURY A.D.

3 3/8 in. (67.7 grams, 86 mm).

Comprising a tapering sidewall with carination and convex underside, trumpet-shaped foot with beaded rim; D-shaped thumb-pad to the rim with narrow chamfered handle and spur beneath; frieze of fronds reserved against a pounced field.

Old Belgian private collection, 1970s.
Acquired on the Brussels art market, 2008.

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.12908-242700.

Cf. similar cup in Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, under accession no.F2012.1 (fluted cup with ring handle decorated with elephant heads); see the exhibition The Sogdians: Influencers on the Silk Roads at Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institute; Marshak, B., ‘A Sogdian Silver Bowl in the Freer Gallery of Art’ in Ars Orientalis, 29, 1999, pp.103-110; see cup with similar handle in the Hermitage State Museum, Saint Petersburg inventory no.S-251; cf. a similar goblet in the treasure of Mala Perescepina, in Daim, F., Hunnen + Awaren, Reitervölker aus dem Osten, Burgenländische Landesausstellung 1996, Schloß Halbturn, 26 April - 31 Oktober 1996, Eisenstadt, 1996, p.214ff., no.5.18.

Footed silver cups with ring handles were well known in Central Asia and were common in Sogdian silverwork of the 7th – 8th century A.D. The low beaded foot and the ring handle with lobed thumb rest are well documented in Sogdian silver attributed to the same period. The plant and floral decoration finds parallel with a silver bowl from Xijao (Marshak, 1999, fig.6), which shows the same low beaded foot of our cup. This decoration is also visible on a vessel from the Malaya Perescepina treasure, sent by the Emperor Heraclius to the Bulgarian Khan Kuvrat. Heraclius took it together with other precious objects as war booty after defeating the Sasanians in 627-628 A.D.