Bronze Ewer

The first Islamic centuries created a variety of different shapes of ewers. This bronze ewer relates to a very specific group of ewers that takes its form of a Sasanian silver prototype from Iran.
This cast bronze water ewer (āftābe) has an ovoid-shaped body, a high foot, and a slender ridged neck. Its curved handle is surmounted by a palmette-shaped thumbpiece and was attached at the top of the horizontal rim of the mouth and at the body of the ewer. Its body is undecorated whereas the neck and the base of the handle show engraved decorations in the form of a pair of bird’s heads or in the design of an antelope’s head. These characteristics can also be found on other bronze ewers created in the immediate post-Sasanian period of early Abbasid Iran.