BADA

A beautiful Hispano-Moresque charger from the collection of BADA member Amir Mohtashemi.

This large, shallow charger might once have been the centrepiece of a wealthy European family’s table, its metallic lustre shimmering in the flickering light of a candle. The dish is decorated with brown copper lustre with cobalt blue highlights against a creamy-white tin glaze.

A central raised boss features a heraldic eagle, sinister, rising, wings displayed and inverted. This emblem is likely to be the Eagle of St John, a Spanish heraldic emblem associated with the Catholic Kings and adopted by the nobility. The raised part of the boss is moulded with radiating lines.

These lines alternate in blue and brown. Surrounding the raised boss are three concentric circles filled with typical late 15th or early 16th-century Valencian patterns, notably network, which resembles fish scales, and flowerhead work. The flowerhead ring is further decorated with six blue quatrefoil rosettes.

Manises, Spain, circa 1500.
Tin-glazed earthenware with lustre decoration.
46 centimetres diameter, 5 centimetres deep.

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