HISTORY BEHIND THIS DISH
To be frank, we have no idea about the creative origins of this dish!
My wife loves fine Chinaware, Porcelain and "bright shiny hand crafted things" and this is one of the latter for sure. After many years we had way too many items of both the chinaware (advertised all over this website) and the metalwares such as this dish. This piece is a bit unique in her collection because she generally collected Sterling Silver and Electroplated Silver and not much Brass.
This dish is pretty special (to us anyway) because of the skills used in creating it.
The base dish is a solid, heavy Brass - not that bright Yellow Brass but this Brass has a golden glow to it - leaning towards a metallic Gold appearance. We have been told that this means more Zinc is in this alloy (the higher the Zinc content in Brass, the more the colour shifts towards Yellow/Gold)
Into this Brass base has been encrusted or embedded other metals, all by hand, we believe this is called Koftgari art.
The two metals used are Copper and Silver
We do not know the technique used to create this artwork (apparently there are a number of methods) but if we look extremely closely at the embedded metal, we can see tiny little dots along the edges so I guess it was beaten into the Brass. The underside of the Brass also has this "beaten look"
The embedded metalwork is raised above the base Brass metal, not buried into it.
The Silver is definitely real Silver (purity is unknown though) because when we took this dish out of our cabinet (it hadn't been on display for years) the Silver had oxidised and gone Black - my wife hates that about Silver products, that nice shiny Silver going yellowish then brown then black. Silver forever needs cleaning!
What has always been a mystery to both of us is the design and the meaning, if any.
We do know that this type of Koftgari metalwork was produced both in the Arabian peninsula and India a LONG time ago but try as we might, we cannot make any sense of the design and in particular the centre symbolism. Arabic? Indian? We just don't know ...
We hope that someone else appreciates the skills needed to create this lovely "shiny thing" and even better, knows the meaning of the symbolism used ....
BRASS DECORATIVE DISH
Solid Yellow Brass base
Koftgari metalcrafted using Silver and Copper
Artwork design is unknown
Artist who created this dish is also unknown, there are no markings, identification marks or otherwise anywhere on this dish
DIMENSIONS:
Diameter: 142mm (5.5 Inches) outside
The central area of the dish drops by 7.5mm and in this central area the diameter is 100mm (4 Inches)
Brass base thickness: 1.9mm
Silver & Copper inlay metals vary between 1.3mm ~ 6.2mm width
WEIGHT: 192g
COSMETIC CONDITION:
USED
CLEAN
To show off the dish colouring and splendour, my wife spent a bit of time rubbing it up with a soft cloth - those who know Brass will know this is not a quick task! We are both not into this "must retain the patina" nonsense! We like our metalware to show off it's colours ...
NO damage to any of the base Brass metal
NO damage to the embedded metals, both the Silver and Copper (no segments of the metal have "come out" from the base material, in fact we imagine that this would be extremely difficult to achieve as the added metals look to be there for the long term!)
We used to have a small stand for this dish (when my wife had space to display it) but that stand has been dedicated to another piece so we are NOT offering a stand with this dish.
While this dish is waiting for a new owner, we have been advised to place it into a sealed clear plastic packet to reduce the oxidisation of the metals - it will be supplied in this manner (sealed in plastic)
SPECIAL FOOTNOTE:
While these dishes are quite difficult to find and the asking price online by others is "all over the shop" varying between $60 and $900 (!), we are asking only what my wife paid for it many years ago. We don't consider the monetary value too much, the new owner should be more interested in the skillset used by it's creator!
