Exhibitions 9


“everything on the sea can come to us”. Tangible evidence for a vas Abbasid transoceanic foodway exists in the form of turquoise-glazed storage jars, made in lower Iraq and found on coastal sites from Mozambique to Yangzhou in China, and even in the archipelago of Japan’. Chinese ceramics, in symmetry with the turquoise jars, are a recurrent feature of sites in Iraq and the gulf, including whiteware, stoneware, low-fired sancai earthenware, as well as large number of storage vessels used for importing perishable goods. Linda Komaroff notes in her chapter on


‘Chinese Porcelain and the Fine Art of Feasting in 15th and 16th Century Iran’ that Chinese ceramics played a key role in Islamic lands not only as tableware, but as a source of inspiration and emulation that led to important developments in indigenous pottery traditions, indication a long-lived and widespread taste for such imported wares. During the late Tang dynasty, in the 8th to 9th century, white- bodied stoneware and its direct descendant, porcelain, made in northern China, were widely exported westward to Abbasid lands. From the 14th century, most Chinese porcelains were made in Jingdezhen. Such wares travelled to Iran as part of the overland and especially maritime trade with China. She writes, ‘Tis taste for imported porcelain is demonstrated not only by textual accounts and in Persian manuscript illustrations, but by the objects themselves that bear inscriptions indicating that they once belonged to members of the Iranian elite, some of whom amassed significant collections. Tese


assemblages of Chinese


porcelain, like the famed collection donated by Shah ‘Abbas to the


Te exhibition specifically looks at


Ottoman and Safavid coffee cultures. Farshid Emami, in his essay on the topic explains that the material culture and social rituals of drinking coffee first emerged among the Yemeni Sufis in the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Te habit reached Mecca and Cairo in the early 1500s and by the mid-16th century coffee had become a lucrative commodity


disseminated by


merchants. Te beverage soon gained popularity across the Ottoman empire, particularly in the capital, Istanbul. In the early 1600s, Istanbul reportedly was


home to 600


coffeehouses. By the turn of the 17th century, coffee had also spread eastward to Safavid Iran, where a vibrant coffee culture flourished in the capital of Isfahan. From the court to the city, coffee exerted a tremendous


impact on ceremonial


Ladies around a Samovar by Isma’il Jalayir (active 1862-89), Iran, Tehran, circa 1870s, oil on canvas, 156.5 x 213 cm, given by Lady Janet Clerk, Victoria and Albert Museum, London


Ardibil Shrine (in 1605-06), must have


been multigenerational,


probably incorporating dynastic or familial collections’. Feasting at the Mughal courts is


also a topic for exploration in the exhibition. Tis chapter of the catalogue is written by Neha Varmani, who tells us ‘Te magnificence of these convivial gathering can be gleaned from the tuy-i-


tilism


(magical feast) of 1531, hosted by Humayun, the second emperor of the South Asian Timurid dynasty – or the Mughal empire as its commonly


known. Held of the banks of the river Yamuna in Agra, the tuy-I tilism marked the one-year anniversary of Humayun’s reign as the ruler of Hindustan (present-day northern Indian and Pakistan). Te feast was organised in an octagonal pavilion with water pool in the middle, decorated with Persian carpets, gold- embroidered cushions, pearl-strings, jewel-studded vessels, utensils made of silver and sandalwood, and fruits and jars of sherbets laid out on gold- spun sufras (cloths for serving food). Feasting was an especially significant


political, social, and cultural


institution for the Timurids. In organising and attending gathering during time of political victory as well as turmoil, Humayun was following in Babur’s footsteps. Te Akbarnama, the illustrated account of Akbur’s reign, reiterates Babur’s perspective by placing bazm (banqueting) on par with razm (fighting). Te Mughals conceptualised feasts


as a tool for strengthening bonds with those already in their service and as techniques for inducting new political elect’.


rituals and daily rhythms of urban life in early modern and Ottoman and Safavid lands, as it later did across the globe. Material objects such as cups and pots were more than mere vessels of consumption they made the experience of taking a stimulant tangible and were central to the new modes of social interaction that the rise of coffee had formed and propelled. Tis exhibition will not stimulate


• From 17 December to, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, lacma.org


only the eyes, but also the appetite, reminding visitors of the communal pleasure of food – both its taste and its presentation. It also provides much-needed information on the enormous class of luxury objects that may be broadly defined as tableware and demonstrate how gustatory discernment was a fundamental activity at the great Islamic courts.


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Shaikh Zain ud-Din, Black-Hooded Oriole and Insect on Jackfruit Stump (detail), Calcutta, 1778, watercolour. Gift of Elizabeth and Willard Clark, Minneapolis Institute of Art


Shaikh Zain ud-Din, Black-Hooded Oriole and Insect on Jackfruit Stump (detail), Calcutta, 1778, watercolour. Gift of Elizabeth and Willard Clark, Minneapolis Institute of Art


Shaikh Zain ud-Din, Black-Hooded Oriole and Insect on Jackfruit Stump (detail), Calcutta, 1778, watercolour. Gift of Elizabeth and Willard Clark, Minneapolis Institute of Art


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