A Pen Box with Architectural Cartouches
| Support Type: | Wood Panel |
| Paint Type: | Mixed Media |
| Current Location: | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA |
| Location History: | Tabriz, Iran, nineteenth century |
A Pen Box with Architectural Cartouches by Ali Ashraf. At first view, the object is of exquisite workmanship, designed for use as a writing utensil in the workshop of a great master in Shiraz in 1743-44, during a vibrant period of Persian lacquer work. Ali Ashraf signs and attributes the pen box to his artistic descent from the master painters in the atelier of Muhammad Zaman. The luminous palette and tiny detail of iris blossoms and miniature architectural views is indeed sublime. But it is the implicit contradiction that thrills me – an object intended not to hang in an exhibition but to nest pens; humble implements for writing decrees and poetry and letters of love and the investigation of truth. Art is here ancillary to thought. The architectural vignettes feel like windows into imaginary landscapes and courts and the implied narrative that every act of writing is its own sojourn into another space. The irises blooming with a subtle, gradual unfurling signal that all thought like flowers will blossom only if allowed sufficient time. The lustrous lacquer of the box seem like another means of stopping time against the tide of eventual decline. But the inherent paradox-this glorious container of an artist's aesthetic skill, designed for a purpose seemingly antithetical to such overt display-becomes a declaration that art and learning cannot exist separately. That all wise thoughts are deserving of a beautiful dwelling place and the idea, long before it is expressed in any external way-is ultimately-silence.