The auctioneers thought it was a 19th c. French claret jug with an estimated value of a couple hundred pounds. Turns out, it’s an 11th c. Fatimid rock crystal ewer, one of only 6 known in the world.
Fatimid rock crystal ewers are considered among the rarest and most valuable objects in the entire sphere of Islamic art, with only five known to exist before this extraordinary appearance. Indeed this is the first time one has ever known to have appeared at auction. The last one to surface on the market was purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1862.
It ended up selling for £200,000, which is still a ridiculous bargain give its £5,000,000 market value. There’s no comment in the article about how this piece got to auction. I’m curious to know the history.
Oh, and just in case you didn’t read to the end of the article, allow me to force you:
Disaster befell the final known ewer which was from the Pitti Palace collection in Florence and had an inscription to Caliph al Hakim’s general, Husain ibn Jawhar. For many years it had been on display in the Museo degli Argenti and in 1998 it was accidentally dropped by a museum employee, shattering it irreparably.
:ohnoes:
It’s hard to believe anyone could mistake rock crystal (quartz) for nineteenth century glass. Especially this piece, which looks to be amethyst-purple. (Amethyst is rock quartz stained potassium-purple.) Apart from other considerations, this Fatimid rock crystal ewer bears an intuitive resemblance (I didn’t say physical resemblance) to the vase which Eleanor of Aquitaine presented to her first husband, Louis VII, in 1137. The linked article from the Art Newspaper refers to this only as “A further one was in the treasury of the Abbey of Saint Denis in Paris and is now in the Louvre.” Eleanor’s vase, in clearer crystal, may also have come from the east via Eleanor’s port city of Bordeaux.
Thank you for that fascinating comment, Mr. Fripp. I’m saddened that Arts Newspaper didn’t mention Eleanor of Aquitaine’s prior ownership of the Louvre’s ewer. Not only is historical name-dropping always fun, but in this case it would have emphasized the rarity, age and importance of the Fatimid rock crystal ewers.
I’ve perused your site, and have very much enjoyed reading about your eclectic interests. Did you come across Eleanor’s ewer in your own study of her, or is it something you discovered after the recent auction?