A bowl decorated with colored clays - red, green, black and white - with a fantastic animal and an animal head

The bowl, with a slightly rounded edge, has a typical Persian ceramic decoration called “Sari” type, a name that derives from the town of Sari near the Caspian Sea, where this type of majolica was found in large quantities. The artifact, with its lively iconography, shows an ornament made with clay colored in red, green, white and black on a light engobe; a vigorous animal, probably a lion, takes up most of the surface: it's rising with vitality in the center of the artifact, holding the prey with its hind legs and it's spitting a tongue of fire from its mouth. The figure is clearly derived from the Chinese dragon and it is therefore evidence of the contacts of the Islamic world with that of the Far East, combined with local images and more Western courtly suggestions, such as the tail ending in a flourish that recalls the modules of the miniature, especially the initials of illuminated manuscripts. The bowl, made waterproof by a thin layer of glass, was used for containing liquids.