Vase

This small vase from seventeenth-century Iran was part of a group of blue-glazed ceramics that the Paris-based dealer Dikran G. Kelekian shipped to Freer on approval in the fall of 1904, shortly after the Peacock Room had arrived in Detroit. Described by Freer as a "beautiful small specimen," the stonepaste body of this vessel is covered with a colorless transparent glaze on the interior and at the rim and a cobalt blue glaze on the exterior. Although the glazes are degraded, traces of decoration—a floral design painted in black outline over the glaze—remain faintly visible.