bottle

There are many Islamic relief-cut glasses. Some are monochrome (usually colorless, in imitation of rock crystal), and others are cameo glasses. On all of these objects, however, the background and most of the interior of the main decorative motifs were removed by cutting and grinding, leaving the outlines and a few details in relief. In the ninth and 10th centuries, these objects were widely distributed in the central part of the Islamic world. A wide variety of decorative images was used: palmettes, horses, hares, lions, birds, and even fantastic animals. The bottle shown here is decorated with a broad frieze that contains three pairs of ibexes facing one another across a vegetal motif. The cutting is careful and detailed, even on the inside of the rim and the underside of the base - areas that were not normally visible on such objects.