A SASANIAN DEEP BLUE CUT GLASS VASE, PERSIA, CIRCA 5TH-7TH CENTURY A.D.

拍品描述

A SASANIAN DEEP BLUE CUT GLASS VASE, PERSIA, CIRCA 5TH-7TH CENTURY A.D. Of bottle form, rising from a flat base through a piriform body to a distinct shoulder, above which a tall cylindrical neck tapers slightly toward a plain cut rim. The body is worked with staggered rows of oval facets arranged in a honeycomb pattern, the ovals set close but not touching, so that the intervening ridges form a fine lattice across the surface. The neck continues the scheme in reduced form, with two registers of elongated oval facets separated by a plain collar at the junction with the shoulder, and the transition from body to neck is marked by a pair of horizontal cut grooves. The metal is a deep cobalt of considerable saturation, its surface bearing a light dulling and scattered patches of weathering consistent with long burial. The wheel-cut oval facets are the defining feature of the decoration and belong to a tradition of glass ornament in which the vessel's form is subordinated to a repeating geometric pattern imposed by the lapidary. Each facet is ground into the thick wall of the blown blank and slightly hollowed, so that the interior of the oval carries a softer, more diffused blue while the ridges between catch and return the light directly. The effect is one of controlled refraction, the single mass of coloured glass broken into a field of discrete reflective units. The technique is one of the signature contributions of Sasanian workshops and was carried out on blanks whose walls were left deliberately thick to accept deep grinding without perforation. Sasanian glass of this type circulated widely beyond the borders of the empire, reaching Byzantium, the Caucasus, the Tang court, and burial contexts in Japan, where the celebrated cut glass bowl of the Shōsō-in preserved an intact example of the tradition. The prestige of the medium in its own period rested on the combination of a costly deep-coloured metal, achievable only by the addition of cobalt in carefully controlled quantities, and the labour-intensive cold-working that followed the blowing. Deep blue cut vessels stood at the upper end of the production and were plainly luxury objects, associated with courtly and elite consumption rather than domestic use. The bottle form with faceted body and long neck also anticipates shapes that would continue in Islamic glass production of the early centuries after the conquest, and the visual vocabulary of the honeycomb facet passed into that later tradition largely unaltered. This bottle exemplifies the confident geometry of Sasanian cut glass at its mature phase, in which a simple blown form is transformed by the lapidary into an ordered field of light. The retention of the deep cobalt metal, the completeness of the neck, and the regularity of the faceting across both body and neck place it within the small group of surviving intact vessels that carry the tradition in its full form rather than in fragment. Dimensions: Height: 18cm

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