R - Metropolitan Museum of Art

4
56-61. The picture of glassmaking in
Islamic Iran before around 1600 is not
clear, but accounts of travelers, miniature
and wall paintings, and business documents
from that time on shed light upon
local production and indicate a brisk
import business.
The French traveler Jean-Baptiste
Tavernier, who journeyed to Persia in the
middle of the seventeenth century, specifically
mentions that Shiraz had three or
four glass houses that manufactured
large and small bottles for rose water and
other locally made perfumes as well as
many types of containers for pickled
fruits exported abroad. Another contemporary
traveler writes that Shiraz wine
was taken to the Gulf port of Gombroon in
long-necked bottles that were protected
by wicker coverings. Several of the
seventeenth-century travelers' accounts
pointedly note how unsuccessful the
Persians were at glassmaking. It appears
that very little, if any, of this Safavid glass
has survived.
From the late sixteenth century on, we
have records showing that Venetian glass
vessels, beads, mirrors, windowpanes,
and spectacles were being sent to Persia.
Among the most popular items were
kalians, or huqqa bases, for smoking
tobacco.
The six objects shown here were all
produced in nineteenth-century Persia
and are typical in their minimal surface
ornamentation, their rather graceful
shapes, and, in some cases, their indebtedness
to earlier European glass. The
kalian with the flowers inside its base
(no. 58) is a good example of this Western
influence; numerous eighteenth-century
documents record the Persian penchant
for Venetian-made huqqa bases with
lampwork (rods of glass worked into various
forms over an open flame) fruits and
flowers enclosed within them. An early
nineteenth-century traveler observed
that copies of such objects were made in
Shiraz, and the Metropolitan's example
is probably one of these.
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