Late Byzantine - Early Islamic hand carved stone oil lamp – circa 1000 AD

Description

Late Byzantine - Early Islamic hand carved stone oil lamp – circa 1000 AD
Up for sale is this wonderful Early Islamic decorated stone oil lamp, hand-carved from a single piece of stone with geometric markings, zig zag pattern, and lines on top and sides.
This Early Islamic Stone Oil Lamp measures:
Length: 5.5" inches long = 14.2 cm;
Height: 1.4" tall = 3.5 cm;
Width: 1.75” = 4.4 cm;
Weight: 11.9 oz. = 337 g;
Condition: Perfect for the age, some scratches and normal wear, no later alterations.
Provenance:
This item and other unknown items were found in a foot locker that a collector has bought recently at auction in Texas, USA. There were two stone oil lamps, and a Chinese ginger jar.
History of the oil lamp.
There is a
transitional period
from Byzantine to Islamic lamps.
Lamps of this
transitional period
changed from being decorated with crosses, animals, human likenesses, birds, fish, etc., to being decorated with plain linear, geometric, and raised dot patterns.
The early Islamic lamps are a continuation of Byzantine lamps.
Decorations were initially a stylized form of bird, grain, tree, plant or flower.
Then they became entirely geometric or linear with raised dots.
Patterns in Islamic artifacts normally take one of three different forms: vegetable, or curving vines, often called arabesques; calligraphic verses, usually from the Quran; and geometric shapes.
Instead of representing something specific, as a symbol would in Western art, patterns in Islamic architecture are meant to represent abstract concepts related to Islam and encourage people to think about the impermanence of the physical world and the unity and nature of God.