A PAIR OF EXQUISITE TIMURID BRASS SWIVEL WITH A DEEP LATTICEWORK

This thesis provides the first systematic study of the metalwork of the Timurid period in Iran, ca. 1370-1507. As a corollary to this, it relates this material to the overall development of Iranian metalwork from the mid-12th through the early 16th century. The contention of this thesis is that a distinctive style of metalwork was formulated and realized in the Eastern Iranian world under the reign of the Timurid dynasty. To demonstrate this argument Chapter One fully reviews pre-existing Iranian metalwork traditions, but focusing on the 14th century material in order to ascertain the extent to which these wares provide a prelude to the metalwork of the Timurid period. Chapter Two indicates how, when and where a uniquely Timurid style of metalwork may have first been formulated. Namely, the earliest wares produced under Timurid patronage are shown to represent the coalescing of a number of artistic traditions and metalwork trends, which seems to have come about as a direct consequence of the Timurid invasions of Central and Western Asia and concomitant transfer of diverse artists to Central Asia in the late 14th/early 15th century. Chapter Three gathers together a group of fifty objects that demonstrate the distinctive Timurid style and which are shown to be the products of a metalwork industry that arose in the Timurid East in the first half of the 15th century. This chapter identifies and defines those characteristics of shape, technique, decoration and epigraphy that distinguish Timurid metalwork from earlier Iranian wares and which also serve to unite the Timurid material as a cohesive class of metalwork. Finally, what is here termed the “Timurid” style of metalwork is shown to have found its ultimate expression in Khorasan, probably at the Timurid capital Herat, in the late 15th and early 16th century. Chapter Four demonstrates that the significant religious and political changes that Khorasan underwent after the fall of the Timurid dynasty (in 1507) did not have an immediate impact upon the style of metalwork thus far associated with this region, rather this same style was initially continued under the patronage of two subsequent dynasties.