A Very Fine ‘Safavid’ Pierced Steel Quatrefoil Panel

A Very Fine ‘Safavid’ Pierced Steel Quatrefoil Panel
With a band of extremely delicate reciprocal trefoil designs around the rim, traces of gilding
The inscription reads:
‘ya Muhammad’ O Muhammad
Steel
Iran
Second half 17th Century or Early 18th Century

SIZE: 14.5cm dia. - 5¾ ins dia.

PROVENANCE:
Ex Private UK collection since 1990
Christie’s Important Islamic Art Auction, 7th April 2011, 120A
Ex Private English collection

This panel has the same basic outline and basic layout as a small group of Safavid cut steel panels, an example sold at Christies, from the collection of Professor Ehsan Yarshater, 10th April 1999, lot 63 and another, 17th April 2007. Similar quatrefoil panels are found amongst the door fittings formerly in the Harari collection said to be from the Dar-i-Imam in Isfahan (A.U. Pope, A Survey of Persian Art, Oxford, 1938, pl.1389). Another example is in the David Collection (Kjeld V. Folsach, Islamic Art: The David Collection, Copenhagen, 1990, no.349, p. 208). Two further panels from that group were sold at Sotheby’s, 22nd October 1992, lot 179.
The present panel differs from previously published examples partly in that the central panel has a brief inscription, further more, in the exquisite pierced reciprocal trefoil border. This motif was frequently encountered in the seventeenth century, on carpets, pottery and manuscripts as well as metal. Rarely however has it been so delicately worked as here, in steel.