A Second “Herat Bucket” and Its Congeners

Abstract

In 1978 the late L. T. Giuzalian published a cast brass or bronze bucket (fig. 1) in the Hermitage collections.1 His detailed description of the object and reading of its inscriptions are unnecessary to repeat here. Giuzalian proposed that it should be known as the bucket, because at the time it was first illustrated in the scholarly literature it was in the collection of the distinguished French collector Louis Fould, in Paris.2 Subsequently the bucket came to Russia, where it passed into the Faberge family, one of whom offered it to the Hermitage for purchase in 1926, though for some reason it was not bought. On the closure of the Fab rg6 workshops and the emigration of the family it remained behind in Leningrad. It appeared in an antique shop in 1946 and somewhat later, in 1953, was acquired by the State Hermitage. That in brief is its recent history. In its somewhat different shape, its unusual decorative composition, and many details of its ornament, the Fould bucket differs markedly from buckets associated with late-twelfthor early-thirteenth-century Khurasan. This was all noted in Giuzalian's article, though he still attrib-