Probably 14th century Ilkhanid or Mamluk brass bowl, £11,000 at Taylors in Montrose.
The 12in (31cm) vessel offered on February 6, of typical form with rounded base and sloping shoulder, came for sale from a private estate in the Aberdeenshire area from a family whose ancestors had travelled extensively in the 19th century.
However, this was not a revivalist piece of the type that many Victorian and Edwardian tourists brought back from the Near East.
Closer inspection suggests it is probably 14th century in date. Often originally inlaid in gold or silver, many of these were made in the Fars region in the west of Iran during the Ilkhanid period and some in Mamluk Egypt and Syria.
The inscriptions are typically thuluth prayer inscriptions alongside the name or names of the bowl’s first owners.
