Plate with king hunting lions

241-272 A.D.

Metal was a highly prized medium in the Islamic world. It could be wrought for personal adornment, for use in the home, for weapons and for currency. Metalwork used the same repertoire of decorative motifs as those on ceramics- figures, animals, plants, geometric patterns and calligraphy- but metals were even more elaborately covered with these images. Pre-Islamic metalworking traditions-from Sasanian Iran for example-continued to be used in Italy, in Iran and everywhere in between.

Silver

1 15/16 in. (4.92 cm)

Diam.: 10 5/8 in.

Charles E. Merrill Trust

66.103

Provenance: N. Cohen, Teheran, Iran via Samuel Dubiner, Tel Aviv, Israel; Charles E. Merrill Trust, November 18, 1966

Not currently on view

Resources

Published ReferencesFuller, Richard E., Seattle Art Museum: Accessions '66, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer/Northwest Today, January 22, 1967, illus.

Art of Asian Recently Acquired by American Museums, in Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 21, 1967-68, p. 91, fig. 53

Fuller, Richard E. The Beauty of Oriental Art, in Today's Art, December 1, 1969 pp. 20-21

Rogers, Millard B., Engagement Book: Iranian Art in the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1972, fig. 18.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

Learn more about Equity at SAM