A Chinese translucent blue Peking glass bowl for the Islamic market

The bowl is delicately cut with straight sides and a flaring rim, it is crisply carved to the exterior with four inscriptions in Arabic separated by two pair of lotus scrolls. The neck is decorated with four equally-spaced lotus scrolls. The underside is carved with a further inscription.

Provenance: Christie's London, 14 October 2003, lot 106.

Catalogue notes: The inscriptions state: 'mawlana al-sultan, al-tahiyya kamalahu, awwalahu hadiran, wa al-salama' which may be translated as a statement that the Sultan is the lord, and on the base the inscriptions are taken from the Quran.

The form of this vessel is based on a Ming dynasty original, for example from the Yongle period, which in turn was based on Mamluk brass.

A glass bowl of a similar shade and a slightly earlier date can be found in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, as published in Claudia Brown and David Rabiner, 'Clear As Crystal, Red As Flame: Later Chinese Glass', 1990, p. 49, no. 12, and a further blue-glass Arabic-inscribed bowl in the same publication, pp. 62-63, no. 27.