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Seljuk Bowl with Horseman (with faked face), Rayy, late 12th century.

A larger image of this Seljuk Bowl with Horseman (with faked face), Rayy, late 12th century. Victoria and Albert Museum C.7-1947. Dish Place of Origin: Rayy Dimensions: Diameter: 36.5cm Description: Dish of fritware painted with brownish gold lustre, and with a light blue glaze on the reverse. Wide recessed foot-ring, convex well, and narrow flattened him. Inside is painted a horseman riding to the left, reserved on a dark lustre ground. In the ground are reserved palmette scrolls and leaves. On the rim are half-moon patterns in lustre. The blue glaze on the reverse stops at the foot ring. Accession Number: C.7-1947 Victoria and Albert Museum

52. Lustre-painted wares. Persia (Rayy); late 12th century C. Diam. 14¼in. Victoria and Albert Museum. (pages 37, 38) The bowl as it appeared in A. Lane, Early Islamic Pottery, New York, 1948 and fig. 5 in Watson 2004.

[Watson] Fig. 6-Detail of fig. 5, after cleaning off the restoration, showing face inserted from a foreign vessel, hair formed from a sherd cut to shape, beard no longer pointed.

    It is easier to see why Lane was taken in by the next example. In Early Islamic Pottery, he illustrates on facing pages two similar Iranian lustre dishes of the late 12^th century each showing a mounted rider.⁹ The rider on the right has the classic "moon-face" of an Iranian Saljuq beauty; that on the left has a squarer face framed by a pointed beard (fig. 5). Lane compares him to a falconer on a Fatimid lustre dish from Egypt [Lane plate 26B] and suggests that he was painted by an Egyptian in Iran, while the "moon-face" was painted by an Iranian.¹⁰ Alas, recent conservation of the putative Egyptian-painted dish has revealed that it is constructed from fragments of at least two separate dishes: the face inserted with foreign fragments cut to form turban and hair, the beard modern paintwork (fig 6). The square Egyptian-style face is entirely the work of the modern faker.¹¹ But Lane, finding a stylistic demonstration of his thesis that Egyptians brought lustre painting to Iran, did not look closer. The importance of the piece for his argument ironically meant that he examined it less. Agreeing with his thesis, I did exactly the same almost 30 years later but with much less excuse: the dish in the meantime had been cleaned to show exactly where the restoration and missing parts were, and it was on public display again in the Museum — but the photograph I had ordered from the Museum happened to be old.¹² This was our "Piltdown man" - our excitement at the "missing link" over-rode our judgement.¹³
Fakes and forgeries in Islamic pottery by Oliver Watson (2004)