This stucco and glass window was produced according to the traditional method used in the manufacture of qamariyyāt in North Africa to this day (see Technique) and represents a motif that was widespread in Egypt during the Ottoman period. Similar windows have survived in several of the museum collections studied (see for instance IG_7, IG_166, IG_178, IG_255, IG_356).
The representation of flowers in a vase is a widespread motif in Islamic arts. It can be found across numerous media, such as ceramics, wood panelling, wall paintings, textiles as well as stucco and glass windows, over a long period in both sacred and profane contexts. Among the most sophisticated examples are the stucco and glass windows from the apartments of the Crown Prince at the Topkapı Serail (early 17th century, date of the windows uncertain) and the Sultan’s Lodge (Hünkâr Kasrı) of the Yeni Cami (1661–1663, date of the windows uncertain), both in Istanbul.
In the 19th century, windows with this motif were very popular with Western architects and artists. The growing interest in such windows is evidenced by numerous book illustrations, sketches, and paintings (see for instance IG_43, IG_118, IG_149, IG_153, IG_437, IG_443, IG_461), as well as by the replicas of such windows installed in Arab-style interiors across Europe (IG_54–IG_59, IG_64, IG_91, IG_431).
The window discussed here shows a traditional composition of flowers arranged in a vase along a central axis, but it differs from other qamariyyāt of the same type on account of its unusual (landscape) format, the bowl-shaped form of the shallow vase, and the comparatively compact representation of the flower bouquet, which in other examples develops more vertically. The design is of comparatively high quality, as individual flowers can be recognized.
According to the museum records, the window dates to the 17th century. There are, however, some indications that point to a later production date: firstly, the good state of preservation of the stucco lattice, which would have shown clearer signs of weathering if it had been installed and exposed to the elements for a longer period of time, and secondly, the use of cylinder-blown flat glass (also called broad-sheet). In the Islamic world, sheet glass was usually produced using the crown-glass process, while in Europe, the broad sheet-method was the dominant technique to manufacture flat glass. The Hungarian architect Max Herz (1856–1819) states that sheet glass was imported to Egypt from Europe from the 19th century, because local production had come to a standstill (Herz, 1902, p. 53).
A hand-written letter dated 22 May 1893 to Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832–1904), the then director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York provides information on the provenance of the window. The author of this letter, the American architect William Robert Ware (1832–1915), writes that he had acquired this and various other windows in the spring of 1890 from several well-known art and antiquity dealers in Cairo. He mentions [Gaspare] Giuliana, [E. M.] Malluk, [Nicolas?] Tano, and [Panayotis] Kyticas (on their commercial activities see Volait, 2021, pp. 60–64). In his letter, Ware further states that he was told that the windows ‘had been taken from old houses’ and ‘from old mosques, that had been dismantled’, but that he was not able to get ‘any precise information as to their original places’ (Ware, 1893).
In 1893, Ware donated this window as part of a lot of 17 qamariyyāt (IG_169, IG_171–186) to The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Ware, 1893).
