Ceremonial Spittoon or Basin (late 1800s): Art, History and Details

Ceremonial Spittoon or Basin (late 1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This basin, as with the mosque lamp CMA 1981.10, is representative of reproductions of Mamluk glass that were prominent in the late 1800s in Europe during a period of resurgence of interest in Islamic art. At this time, collectors and artists revived the techniques of enameling and gilding that are hallmarks of Mamluk glass.

Object facts

• Title: Ceremonial Spittoon or Basin
• Date: late 1800s
• Culture: Europe
• Type: Glass
• Technique: glass with enameled and gilded decoration
• Dimensions: Diameter: 31.8 cm (12 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Islamic Art
• Department: Islamic Art
• Accession number: 1944.235

A detail from the museum

The intense enamel colors form striking star and leaf patterns.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Part II. Annual Report Issue for the Year 1944." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 32, no. 6 (1945): 103-30.
• Hollis, Howard. "Two Examples of Arabic Enameled Glass." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 32, no. 10 (December 1945): 179–181.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.