Old find from Central Asia

[clovisoid]

Several years ago I spent some time working on an investment project in the beautiful area where Tajikistan, Afghanistan and China come together (looking at tomato farms for a Chinese company, no weird government stuff.). One of the government liaisons who was traveling with me helped me find some relics on my down time. I found lots of cool Neolithic points in blowouts, but near some ruins related to the old Silk Road I found this bowl. The thread on the pipe reminded me of it, Painshill anything thoughts?
It could be modern Chinese as they've been trading here for hundreds of years, it could be Islamic art from the south or east, could have been Turkish trading, etc. The odd part is that it feels like it is painted on charcoal or a carbonized gourd (black and almost oddly lightweight.) But it looks like pottery.

[CMD]

Not my area of knowledge, Joshua, but relic hunting on the old Silk Road is a memory I would treasure! And I'm betting Roger will have some good ideas on your find.

[CliffJ]

I like that artifact!
It's hard to get the perspective correct, but it looks like it's painted on the outside? And is the rim apparent, so you can get a sense of the size and depth of it?
Very cool.

[clovisoid]

Cliff,
Here is a side shot for perspective.  It is painted on the outside, no glaze.  There isn't much of a rim, but from my loupe the paint in a couple of areas rolls up and over, so I don't think it went much beyond this.  Th paisley patterns are very well painted, some very fine parallel lines and brush strokes.
In handling it for this picture, I was again surprised by the weight.  I took a small piece and it floats in water.  It's got me stumped.

[clovisoid]

I should also point out that it was eroding out of blow out behind an adobe wall, most of the stuff looked old but you pass everything from modern coke bottles, rusty USSR era abandoned trucks from the Afghan wars, 100 year old glass bottles, to 5,000 year old neolthic points.

[rmartin]

That is a beautiful design. Love the paint!

[G10+]

:evil: Man that's killer !!! In how large of an area has that ??? And how deep ?? Thank u for posting

[painshill]

Had to think about this for a bit.
I think you’re right. It probably is a gourd – likely the bottom part of a Calabash (bottle gourd). I would suspect it has been charcoal treated. It takes between 1-3 months to properly dry a gourd naturally in the sun for use as a container and it’s vulnerable to puncture from insect holes during that time (and afterwards too). Swirling burning charcoal embers around inside it not only hurries that process along but the impregnation of smoke deters insects. The porosity of the container is also reduced if the charcoal residues are then rubbed into the vessel, making it both airtight and watertight.
In some cultures (notably the Kalenjin people of Kenya, but also various parts of Asia) they made (still make) a fermented milk drink in gourds treated with a specially-prepared charcoal from the Ite tree which keeps for up to a month from the preservative action of the charcoal and its smoke. Painted gourds would normally be waxed on the outside… with beeswax… but that wouldn’t last for too long after burial.
As for the style, what we know as the “Paisley” pattern (named after a place in Scotland) is actually a derivative of a Persian design known as the “Boteh Jegheh” (sometimes spelled “Buteh”), originating in the Sassanid Dynasty between the 3rd and 7th Centuries AD. It came back in popularity during the Safavid Dynasty (from 1501 to 1736) and especially for the Culture of Azerbaijan (not the modern geographic region of Azerbaijan) in the area formerly known as “Aran” within the expanding Ottoman Empire. There, it became a fusion of Islamic, Iranic, Turkic, Ottoman -and- Eastern European styles.
In early times, the pattern was used on regalia items for the ruling classes and on textiles for the general population. It didn’t become a widely-used decor element in architecture and ceramics until the 16th Century onwards. There was a large concentration of tile-makers in Tabriz (now in modern Iran) and that’s where the skilled painters were centred until 1514 when Sultan Selim I resettled them in Kutahya and Iznik (now in modern Turkey). Bold reds and blues with white are very characteristic colours for the items that came out of those craft centres. From about 1590 onwards, they were supplying painted tiles for interior decoration of mosques, churches, palaces and fine homes, plus crockery galore all over the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
I would venture that a gourd vessel like that probably didn’t come out of one of those kinds of workshops and was more likely decorated by an artisan worker who produced it for his own personal use. Normally that means you’ll never match it to a known pattern.
Here’s a couple of maps to help get your mind round this. The map on the left gives the countries as they are now. The map on the right shows the Safavid/Azerbaijan Empire in blue, within the Ottoman Empire that absorbed it. Your find area is arrowed, and so too is the original tile-making centre of Tabriz (now in modern Iran). The Ottomans moved the best artists (forcibly) from Tabriz to the Western end of modern Turkey, just off the left side of the maps.

[map on right adapted from wpmap.org]
  So, my guess (deduction?)  :laugh: is late 16th to mid-18th Century from the Azerbaijan Culture of the Ottoman Empire in the area of what is now Western Iran through to Western Turkey.

[clovisoid]

Wow, I'm going to have to read through this a couple of times very cool!  Thanks!