Dish with Radiating Inscription
Unknown · Last quarter of the tenth century (975-1000)
A large white dish nearly forty centimetres across carries a single line of dark script that runs around the rim and radiates toward the centre like the spokes of a wheel. The letters are tall, angular Kufic, painted in slip, a liquid clay, over a white slip ground and sealed under a clear glaze. There is no other decoration: the calligraphy is the ornament. The sentence is an Arabic proverb. It reads: forbearance is bitter at the first taste, but at the end it is sweeter than honey. Health to the owner. Follow the elongated upright strokes and see how the potter stretched or squeezed the letters so that the text fills the circle exactly.
Dishes like this were made in the late tenth century in the eastern Islamic lands ruled by the Samanid dynasty, in cities such as Nishapur and Samarkand, for educated buyers who could read the moral maxims on their tableware. They are among the earliest works in which Arabic writing became the sole subject of a decorative object. The dish was given to the Louvre in nineteen thirty-five. Imagine the meal finished and the wisdom appearing as the last morsel was eaten.
Did You Know? The only decoration is a proverb: forbearance is bitter at first but sweeter than honey in the end.
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