Provenance
In 1823 this pitcher, two bowls (or cups), and a wooden saddle were found while plowing on the land of T. I. Laiko (Trever and Lukonin 1987, 122; Smirnov 1909, 14). The find spot was close to a small kurgan near the village of Pavlovka (Павловка), in the Starobel’skii County (Старобельский Уезд) of the Slobodsko-Ukrainskaia Governorate (Слободско-Украинская Губерния; soon to be Kharkov Governorate) of the Russian Empire. According to a letter dated to the 11th of January 1855, an official of the Kerch Historical-Archaeological Museum (then, Kerch Museum), I. S. Lazarevskii, wrote to Count A. A. Perovskii about a trip in the Kharkov Governorate. While there he saw the pitcher in Laiko’s possession and included photographs of it (Trever and Lukonin 1987, 122). Some time after this the pitcher entered the personal collection of Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich Romanov (1850-1908). The pitcher was in his collection in 1896, when the Imperial Archaeological Comission requested for pitcher to be photographed, after which it was returned to Alexei Alexandrovich (Trever and Lukonin 1987, 122). Iakov Smirnov recorded the pitcher in Alexei Alexandrovich’s collection in Vostochnoe serebro in 1909 (Smirnov 1909, 14); however, he had passed away the year prior. The Imperial Hermitage Museum soon thereafter acquired the vessel. The pitcher remains in the renamed State Hermitage Museum with the number S-61.
The two bowls (or cups) and the wooden saddle are now lost, or perhaps around but their provenance history lost.
Today the village nearest the hoard find spot is called Pavlivka (Павлівка) and located in the Bilokurakyns’kii District (Білокуракинський Район), Luhansk Province/Oblast’ (Луганська Область), Ukraine.
Technical Notes
silver with gilding / 33 cm height / 1041 g weight
Major Eurasian Silver Publications
Marshak, B. I. Istoriia vostochnoi torevtiki III-XIII vv. i problemy kul’turnoi preemstvennosti. Saint Petersburg: Akademiia Issledovaniia Kul’tury, 2017. [ris. 199]
Marshak (Marschak), B. I. Silberschätze des Orients: Metallkunst des 3.-13. Jahrhunderts und Ihre Kontinuität. Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1986. [№ 199]
Orbeli, I. A., and K. V. Trever. Sasanidskii metall khudozhestvennye predmenty iz zolota, serebra, i bronzy. Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia, 1935. [T. 48]
Smirnov, Ia. I. Vostochnoe serebro: atlasʺ drevnei serebrianoi i zolotoi posudy vostochnago proiskhozhdeniia naidennoi preimushchestvenno vʺ prědelakhʺ Rossiiskoi imperii. Saint Petersburg: Publishing House of the Imperial Archaeological Commission, 1909. [T. XLIX № 83]
Additional Bibliography
Demange, Françoise, ed. Les Perses sassanides: Fastes d’un empire oublié (224-642). Paris: Musée Cernuschi, 2006.
Lukonin (Loukonine), V. and A. Ivanov. Lost Treasures of Persia: Persian Art in the Hermitage Museum. Washington, D.C: Mage, 1996).
Overlaet, Bruno, ed. Splendeur des Sassanides: l’empire perse entre Rome et la Chine, 224-642. Brussels: Musées royaux d’art et d’histoire, 1993.
Pope, Arthur Upham, and Phyllis Ackerman, eds. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present. London: Oxford University Press, 1938.
Trever, K. V. Senmurv-Paskudzh, Sobaka-Ptitsa. Leningrad: State Hermitage Publishing House, 1937.
Image Credits
Featured Image
Ia. I. Smirnov, Vostochnoe serebro: atlasʺ drevnei serebrianoi i zolotoi posudy vostochnago proiskhozhdeniia naidennoi preimushchestvenno vʺ prědelakhʺ Rossiiskoi imperii (Saint Petersburg: Publishing House of the Imperial Archaeological Commission, 1909), № 83.
Page Images
(1) State Hermitage Museum Website
(2) Ia. I. Smirnov, Vostochnoe serebro: atlasʺ drevnei serebrianoi i zolotoi posudy vostochnago proiskhozhdeniia naidennoi preimushchestvenno vʺ prědelakhʺ Rossiiskoi imperii (Saint Petersburg: Publishing House of the Imperial Archaeological Commission, 1909), № 83.
(3-4) K. V. Trever and V. G. Lukonin, Sasanidskoe serebro: sobranie Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha: khudozhestvenniia kul’tura Irana III-VIII vekov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987), T. 54-56.