This silver box from our last QBO estate sale is about an inch deep and 2″ across. It wouldn’t hold more than a few guitar picks but it wasn’t meant to be practical, it was meant to be art. The lid is inset with polished mother-of-pearl that is slightly domed, following the natural curve of the shell it was cut from. The 2″ tear-drop pendant is double-sided. Both pendant and box were hand-painted using super-fine brushes made with a few Caucasian Squirrel or Persian Cat hairs. (Really!) The solid base colors of the figures were applied first and let dry, then feathery details added on top. Although their clear lacquer protective coating has yellowed with age, the mother-of-pearl still shines, giving the pieces a shimmering depth despite their size. They are Persian miniatures, an exacting art form for which Iranian artists became justifiably famous.
Persian miniature painting was originally developed as book illustration and the Arzhang, a richly illustrated tome by the prophet Mani from the 3rd century CE is regarded as the first influential example. Different schools of Persian miniature painting are named after cities where they developed – Tabriz, Shiraz, Herat. Note that Herat is in Afghanistan, once a part of the Persian Empire. Persian miniatures use stylized perspective so that all human figures are the same size regardless of their position within a scene. Buildings like palaces are compressed and at the same scale whether in the foreground or background. This gives the compositions the feel of an aerial ‘map’ view where everything is neatly stacked so each element can be clearly seen, allowing the artist to create dramatic juxtapositions, or a timeless sense of calm.
Although these two pieces look like antiques, they’re not; Persian miniature painting flourished right up through the 1970s, when Iran was still open to souvenir-buying tourists. The format of painted mother-of-pearl cabochon in a silver setting was used to create boxes, money clips and jewelry such as rings, earrings, or bracelets made up of multiple mother-of-pearl rectangles set side by side to be ‘read’ like the pages of a dreamy little book on long-lost royal pastimes.
The scene on our tiny box shows an action-packed gazelle hunt, a favorite pastime of Persian royalty. The pendant shows birds in a flowering garden, and on the other side, two women singing and dancing outdoors. And here we come to what has been lost to recent history and zealous religious rule. Before Iran was a majority Muslim culture, the primary religion was Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s first monotheisms and lacking the prohibition on depictions of people and animals that exists in Islam. So, as the Persian population slowly converted to Islam from 640–829 C.E., Persian artists stuck with their Persian culture and just kept on painting. It was only when the decadent, secular and vastly unpopular military dictator, the Shah of Iran, was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, that depictions of people and animals were banned by the country’s new hardline religious/political leaders, the Ayatollahs.
So, no Persian miniatures allowed, no artists allowed, no musicians allowed, no a lot of things allowed. Not only can there be no depictions of women singing and dancing outside, in real life women can’t sing and dance outside either. As you’d expect, the Ayatollahs are as unpopular now as the Shah and there are secret generations of artists, musicians and women in general defying those rules, sometimes even in large public protests. Want to know more about Iran, the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and beyond? Check out Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian writer, graphic artist, woman and lover of music. Want your own Persian Miniature? Check out QBO.
Tuesday Treasures was started by our staff member, Jeanne Lusignan. Each week she will be featuring items that have been found at our estate sales. If you would like to submit a treasure for Jeanne to feature in a future installment of “Tuesday’s Treasures”, please follow the button below and send us an email! Please attach a few photos of your treasure in a beautiful setting as well as any details you have about your item such as manufacturer, use, age, region of origin. If you don’t know about the piece, that’s okay! We still might be able to research it for you! Don’t forget to tell us what makes this item such a treasure to you!