Rock Crystal Ewer with Confronted Birds
Unknown · Vase 985-1015 (Fatimid Cairo); lid 1000-1100 (southern Italy)
Cut from a single block of exceptionally pure rock crystal, the ewer was carved in Fatimid Cairo around the year one thousand, when the caliph's craftsmen made the finest crystal vessels in the world. The walls are astonishingly thin. Around the shoulder runs an inscription in Kufic script, a dedication wishing blessing and satisfaction to its owner. Below it the decoration spreads symmetrically around a tree of life: stems ending in palmettes and, on each side, two birds joined at the neck to a lozenge. The rim has a flat, oblique lip that ends in a projecting spout, and the small lid of gold filigree, made in southern Italy in the eleventh century, follows the outline of the mouth and spout exactly.
The ewer entered the treasury of Saint-Denis in the Middle Ages, perhaps already under Abbot Suger, and is securely recorded there from fifteen hundred and five. Its history has been rough: the handle was noted as broken in fifteen seventy six, the body was cracked by the eighteenth century, and today it is reassembled from six pieces. It came to the museum with the rest of the treasury on the fifth of December seventeen ninety three.
Did You Know? The ewer is one of only a handful of carved Fatimid rock crystal vessels to survive, nearly all of them preserved in European church treasuries.
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