Magnificent Mosque Lamp Sells for $6.5 Million, Becoming Highest Priced Glass Object Ever Sold at Auction

London—The 14th-century Sarghitmish lamp from Egypt, one of the rarest and most important examples of Islamic glass ever offered at auction, sold for £5,130,400, or approximately $6,568,383 U.S., at Bonhams Islamic and Indian Art Sale on Tuesday, Nov. 12, becoming the highest priced glass object ever sold at auction. It sold for more than five times its high presale estimate.

The lamp was consigned by a descendant of Egypt’s first Prime Minister, Nubar Pasha, having been in the family for more than a century. It had been regarded by the family as a decorative piece – it had been used as a vase for dried flowers.

“We are absolutely delighted with this result,” Nima Sagharchi, Bonhams’ Group Head of Middle Eastern, Islamic and South Asian Art, said. “The Sarghitmish lamp is a magnificent work of art and craftsmanship. Not only is this lamp extremely rare, it has an impressive and extensive exhibition history, having been showcased in some of Paris’ most important museums.”

“From the mid-1800s, the lamp belonged to the prominent French collector Charles Schefer, and in 1906 it became part of the collection of Armenian aristocrat Boghos Nubar Pasha, the son of Egypt’s first Prime Minister,” Oliver White, Bonhams’ Head of Islamic and Indian Art, said. “It has been passed down in his family ever since. The rarity of the object, together with this impressive provenance, make it one of the most important pieces of Islamic glassware ever to come to market.”

Mosque lamps are considered some of the most technically accomplished examples of medieval glassware anywhere in the world. The technique of simultaneously gilding and enameling glass was almost unique to the Mamluk court, where they were produced in the 13th and 14th centuries for decoration and provision of light in Mosques. Illuminating a Mosque was considered an act of religious patronage, so Mosque lamps were usually dedicated by Sultans and Dignitaries.

This lamp was commissioned by the Mamluk Emir Sarghitmish, a powerful chief during the reign of al Nasir-Hasan. The lamp carries both his name and the Sultan’s name, as well as the blazon of Sarghitmish. It was most likely hung in the Madrasa of Sarghitmish, a very prominent Mosque, that still stands today in Cairo’s Medieval quarter. In 1907, the scholar Yacoub Artin Pasha celebrated the lamp’s beauty observing, “In its entirety, this lamp is on a par with the most beautiful enameled glass lamps I have seen and studied.”

Professor Robert Hillenbrand, writing in Bonhams Magazine, explains: “Each lamp was hung by chains from the roof or tie-beams, in a place of worship, no matter what building type it adorned. Its function was practical, religious and political… In the dim penumbra of such buildings, these lamps were a practical necessity; they enclosed wicks suspended in glass oil containers and created pools of mobile yellow light amid the darkness. The light was both emitted and reflected, and as the viewer moved, so the separate colours of the lamp – blue, gold, black – came into focus one after another as they caught the light.” 

To read the full article on the lamp in Bonhams Magazine, go here.

You May Also Like

The History of Fabergé Easter Eggs

The Religious Story Behind Hummel Figurines

Source link