Beschreibung:

A group of eight Qajar underglaze-painted pottery beehive covers
Persia, possibly Tabriz, 19th/ 20th centuryeach of circular form, seven with circular holes to top and one with a circular hole to bottom, decorated in polychrome on white grounds with birds and floral spray motifs
22.3 cm. diam. on average(8)FootnotesProvenance
Private UK collection.
For a photograph of an intact cane-woven Persian beekeeper's hive with an ornamental calligraphic cover dated to the second half of the 19th Century, see Sotheby's, Islamic and Indian Art, 29 April 1993, lot 186. The ornamental pottery cover would be affixed to the top of the hive for the bees to enter and exit through the small round opening, while the beekeepers would use the rear end of the hive to harvest the honeycombs.
Sotheby's offered a large collection of pottery beehive covers from the property of Dr A Middlehock in April 1993, dated to a period ranging from 1735 to 1935. A group of these covers decorated with similar bird and floral spray motifs as the present lot were dated to 19th or 20th Century Persia (see Sotheby's, Islamic and Indian Art, 29 April 1993, lot 190).
Sophie Germanidou and Alexandra Constantinidou ascribe the collection of lids sold at Sotheby's to Tabriz, a flourishing centre of economic activity - including the honey industry - in Qajar Persia (see: Alexandra Constantinidou and Sophie Germanidou, 'An Unusual Ceramic Beehive Lid from Nineteenth-Century Tabriz,' Iran 51 (1), 2013, p. 253).
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