Imre Jakabffy (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 5. (Budapest, 1977)

FEHÉRVÁRI, Géza: A Hoard of Blue and White Sherds from the Dasht-e Kavir

10. BASE OF A LARGE PLATE, ACC. NO. 75.17. 11. OUTSIDE OF 75.17. but heavy foot-rings, most likely belonged to large plates, like the Hopp Museum fragment no. 75.16 (figs. 2—3). That must have been the case with DK.4 and 6 (fig. 12) and DK.9 (fig. 13). Next to the rocky landscape with the winding road and fence, the most frequent decoration on these sherds was a kind of a flying leaf. Such design is not represented in the Hopp Museum fragments. The leaf appears against slanting thin lines surrounded by simple scrollwork, or occasionally by tassel-like patterns, like on DK.7 —DK.ll (fig. 13). This leaf pattern may be a derivation of the "Artemesia leaf", often depicted on Chinese porcelain of the T'ien-ch'i (1621—27), Shun-chih (1644—61) and K'ang-hsi (1662—1723) periods.

17 Identical leaves are shown on the rim of a bowl, which was exhibited at Colnaghi in 1976. The leaves on that bowl are very similar to that of DK. 11 (fig. 13). The decoration on the Colnaghi bowl is painted in dark, bluish-black colour, and accordingly the author attributed it to Yezd from the early 18th century.

18 DK. 12 (fig. 14) with the elaborate geometrical design in the centre, may be a misinterpretation, or perhaps a further evolution of the artemesia leaf pattern. The third frequent pattern on these sherds from the Dasht-e Kavir is some kind of floral decoration. On two examples, DK. 15—16 (fig. 14), they appear in a landscape. In the latter instance in fact it is the landscape that dominates, and the 113