Lustre bowl

Bowl with blue and lustre-painting. The base image of the bowl is a ship outlined in blue on a ground of spiral lustre-scrollwork. Depicted below the ship is a fish, which is interpreted as a playing dolphin. Four half-oval medaillons with different interior decoration frame the ship under the rim. The hull takes up almost the entire breadth of the image surface and is accentuated by vertical stripes indicating planks, which are picked up in the flag on the rear. On the ship’s bow a gun is visible. Furthermore, on the rear is a construction with a guardrail bearing an inscription in pseudo-Arabic, which resembles the Arabic word for ‘peace’. The sail is expanded; its horizontal stripes form a beautiful contrast to the hull. This type of the ship is interpreted as a Portuguese Nao; which was an important cargo vessel in Spanish and Portuguese seafaring of the 14th/15th century, when the oceans were controlled by both forces. On the basis of similar Spanish bowls, this artefact is dated to the period from the 14th to the middle of the 15th century. Objects of comparison from Malaga also depict three-masters and show a similar composition of the ceramic and a similar decoration.