Fatimid Luster Bowl with Cock Fight. Keir Collection I. 88.

Bowl
DATE: 11th–12th century
MATERIAL AND TECHNIQUE: Painted in luster on an opaque white glaze
DIMENSIONS: 3 1/8 × 9 1/2 × 9 1/2 in. (7.94 × 24.13 × 24.13 cm)
DEPARTMENT: The Keir Collection of Islamic Art
CREDIT LINE: The Keir Collection of Islamic Art on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art
OBJECT NUMBER: K.1.2014.266
General Description: Keir catalogue number 088
Source: Dallas Museum of Art

Fig. 7. Fatimid Luster Bowl with Cock Fight. 11th century. Keir Collection no. 88. (Photo: from B. W. Robinson, ed., Islamic Painting and the Arts of the Book [London, 1976]).
Early evidence for this new attitude is provided by some Fatimid ceramics, which depict scenes of popular entertainment, like the cock fight (fig. 7) depicted on an eleventh-century luster-painted bowl in the Keir Collection (no. 88). The two performers, apparently a man and an eunuch with a fattish, effeminate face, hold the cocks in preparation for the fight, and seem to examine each other with looks so hostile that it appears to be they, and not the cocks, who are the rivals.
p.35, The Human Figure In Early Islamic Art: Some Preliminary Remarks By Eva Baer

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