Jar

After Freer acquired this highly decayed and damaged Raqqa jar from the Parisian dealer Dikran Kelekian in 1904, he noted that "Kelekian believes that jars of this sort are of early Persian origin. Perhaps Babylonian." Raqqa wares like this jar only began to appear on the art market at the turn of the last century, following the excavation of ancient and medieval pottery in northern Mesopotamia, near modern-day Mosul, and in the south, near Baghdad and along the Gulf. Their cultural and chronological origins were not yet well understood. Even so, Freer was an early enthusiast, finding chromatic harmonies among his already substantial collection of East Asian ceramics, the tonalism of his American paintings, and these iridescent turquoise- and green-glazed vessels from the Near East. He eventually amassed a substantial collection of Near Eastern ceramics. In Detroit, they were prominently featured throughout the Peacock Room, most notably massed around Whistler's La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine and in the eye-level shelves along the west wall.