This stucco and glass window shows similarities with two qamariyyāt with the same motif that were documented by the British architect James William Wild (1814–1892) during his stay in Cairo in the years 1844–1847 in the house of the British physician and collector Henry William Charles Abbott (1812–1859), as attested by two of Wild’s drawings; see IG_438 and IG_444. There are striking analogies in terms of the division of the motif into polygonal fields; one of the drawings (IG_438) even shows dotted laces very similar to those in the window discussed here. However, despite these similarities, it is unlikely that this window corresponds with the one shown in the drawing, as there are differences in the representation of the flowers and the tree.
Although flowers and cypress trees are very common motifs for qamariyyāt (see for instance IG_2, IG_173, IG_289, IG_355, IG_499 ; and IG_10, IG_169, IG_254, IG_257), the overall design of the window discussed here appears to be a rather rare composition that cannot be found in any of the other windows studied within the project.
From a technical and iconographic point of view, it can be assumed that this window was made in an Egyptian workshop during the late Ottoman period. However, the manufacturing characteristics of some of the coloured pieces of glass suggest that at least some of the sheet glass was not produced locally. The pieces of glass show the characteristics of cylinder-blown sheet glass, a technique that was unusual in artisanal glass production in Egypt, but widely used by the European glass industry. Interestingly, the Hungarian architect Max Herz (1856–1819) states in 1902 that sheet glass was imported to Egypt from Europe from the 19th century, because local sheet glass production had come to a standstill (Herz, 1902, p. 53).
According to the MIT Libraries’ records, this window was acquired by the Boston architect Arthur Rotch (1850–1894) together with three other qamariyyāt (IG_259, IG_260, IG_261) in the 1860s or 1870s. However, since he was still of a young age in the 1860s, we assume that he bought the windows at a later date. All four windows show the incised segmental arch and undecorated spandrels. These similarities support the assumption that they once formed a group of windows that were probably made in the same workshop. Traces of weathering on the surface of the latticework suggest that the window was exposed to the elements.
Arthur Rotch studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1872 to 1873, when the American architect William Robert Ware (1832–1915) was head of the newly created Architectural School. Just as other MIT students, Rotch was a trainee at his teacher’s architectural firm, and he continued working at Ware & Van Brunt as a draftsman after completion of his studies in 1874 (Chewning, 1979, p. 26). Interestingly, William Robert Ware also had a collection of stucco and glass windows. He had purchased them in 1890 on the art market in Cairo. In 1893, he donated 17 qamariyyāt to The Metropolitan Museum of Art (see IG_169, IG_171–186). Due to the lack of documentation, it can only be assumed that the one knew about the other’s collection. It also remains unclear where Arthur Rotch’s enthusiasm for stucco and glass windows came from. After Rotch’s death, his sister Annie Lawrence Rotch (1850–1926), wife of Horatio Appleton Lamb, donated all four windows to the Department of Architecture at MIT as part of the Rotch Art Collection.
