bunny bowl, 12thc iran

Photo credit: Yale University Art Gallery.  Hobart and Edward Small Moore Memorial Collection, Gift of Mrs. William H. Moore
This bowl measures 3 3/8 x 7 3/16 in. (8.5 x 18.2 cm), a good size for soup or a salad, perhaps.  I wonder who owned this bowl back in 12th-century Iran, what they liked best to have served in it, and whether they asked specially to have such a graceful, vine-entwined rabbit painted on it.  It was made in Seljuk Period Iran (1038-1194), a period of prosperity and thriving arts (here's the Metropolitan Museum of Art on that).  I was also able to find a reference that suggests the rabbit/vine motif celebrates the goodness of life now and to come. 

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