![]() "The Safavid Ceramic Industry at Kirman." Iran 41 (2003), pp. Vinhais and Welsh 2008 (see footnote 3), p. Catalogue by Luisa Vinhais and Jorge Welsh. Exhibition, Jorge Welsh, London Jorge Welsh, Lisbon. Kraak Porcelain: The Rise of Global Trade in the Late Sixteenth Century and Early Seventeenth Centuries. In 1609 Shah ‘Abbas I endowed a number to the Shrine of Shaikh Safi al-Din in Ardabil (now in the Islamic Collection at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran). The Topkapı Treasury in Istanbul has several late sixteenth-century examples. The Metropolitan Museum’s collection contains a similar elephant-shaped porcelain kendi dating to the late sixteenth century (acc. The kendi was based on a Buddhist drinking vessel known as a kundi, which was introduced into China by Indian Buddhist monks who used it for ablutions during religious ceremonies. A similar example of an elephant-shaped kendi from Safavid Iran is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. ![]() Few Safavid animal-shaped kendis have come to light. Lisa Golombek has applied the term transitional style to this type of blue-and-white ware, on which a blue design is outlined in bluish gray or black, and has assigned it to Kirman in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The tubular neck is painted with floral sprays, birds, and butterflies. A fringed saddlecloth with an elaborate key-fret design and trappings with long ribbons and tassels cover the animal’s body and neck. Closely following the Chinese original, the decoration here is executed in cobalt blue, with grayish blue outlines, on a white ground under a clear glaze. However, in both the Iranian and Chinese examples, the body is surmounted by a tall, cylindrical neck, by which the vessel was held, while the elephant’s short trunk functioned as a spout. The coiled trunk found on Chinese kendis is also absent here. The present example differs from the Chinese prototype in both material and execution: it is made of stonepaste rather than porcelain, and the elephant’s features are rendered in low relief and less naturalistically. Iran was one of the first places to produce kraak imitations. The original Chinese kendis belong to a category of porcelain known as kraak, after a type of large Dutch trading ship that transported such wares. While it is not clear how Iranians used such vessels, they could have been used as bases for water pipes, or qalians, or merely as decorative objects in the prestigious Chinese style. Kendis were exported from China to Europe, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire, where they were often copied and adapted to suit local taste. Elephant-Shaped Water Jar (Kendi) This vessel from Safavid Iran in the shape of a seated elephant with cobalt blue, bluish gray, and white designs has been clearly modeled on a kendi, a Ming Chinese drinking vessel of the Wanli period (1573–1620).
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