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Title

The Art of the Saracens in Egypt

Type of Object
Artist / Producer
Lane-Poole, Stanley · Author
Dating
1886
Research Project
Author and Date of Entry
Sarah Keller 2025

Iconography

Description

In Stanley Lane-Poole’s book about the Islamic art of Egypt, one chapter is dedicated to glass. He comments on glass vessels and lamps and dedicates several pages to stucco and glass windows (pp. 263–267). He describes the motifs and the technique of the windows in the collection of the South Kensington Museum in London (today the Victoria and Albert Museum) in detail and also publishes four photographs of windows.

History

Research

Three years before Stanley Lane-Poole (1854–1931) published his book on the Islamic art of Egypt, he spent three months in Egypt acquiring more than 400 artifacts for the South Kensington Museum in London (today the Victoria and Albert Museum; see Volait, 2021, p. 62). Besides tiles and dishes, he was also able to buy eleven stucco and glass windows from the art dealer Gasparo Giuliana (see Saracenic Art, 1884, p. 3; Volait, 2021, p. 63; Victoria and Albert Archive, Nominal File Stanley Lane-Poole).
As he himself puts it in his preface, he sees his book as a succession to Émile Prisse d’Avennes’ L’Art arabe d’après les monuments du Kaire depuis le VIIe siècle jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe of 1877, the only previous attempt to describe the art of Cairo as a whole. Lane-Poole praises its pictorial plates, but attributes only ‘slight value’ to the text. The author’s goal now was, to ‘cast aside all merely aesthetic canons and prejudices, and base the history of the arts [...] strictly upon sound historical evidence.’ (Lane-Poole, 1886, pp. vii–viii). The description of stucco and glass windows was the most detailed published to date. For the first time, the explanation of the window’s technique and motifs was directly related to specimens preserved in a European collection.
The four photographs in his book show stucco and glass windows that are preserved in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum to this day (MES.LOST. 27, 28, 39, ME.3-2005). Their motifs are a floral stem, a palm tree flanked by cypresses, a mosque flanked by flowers, and a bouquet of flowers in a vase.

Dating
1886
Place of Manufacture

Bibliography and Sources

Literature

Lane-Poole, S. (1886). The art of the Saracens in Egypt. Chapman and Hall.

Saracenic Art at the South Kensington Museum. (1884, October 23). The Times, 3–4.

Volait, M. (2021). Antique Dealing and Creative Reuse in Cairo and Damascus 1850–1890: Intercultural Engagements with Architecture and Craft in the Age of Travel and Reform. Brill. Retrieved June 26, 2024, from https://brill.com/display/title/59736

Image Information

Name of Image
MISC_IG_Lane_Poole_1886_IG_44
Credits
Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/S0001989/page/n5/mode/2up

Citation suggestion

Keller, S. (2025). The Art of the Saracens in Egypt. In Vitrosearch. Retrieved December 5, 2025 from https://vitrosearch.ch/objects/2712888.

Record Information

Reference Number
IG_44