This catalogue accompanied the exhibition of objects from the ‘Orient’ from the collection of Frederik Robert Martin (1868–1933) at the General Art and Industrial Exposition of Stockholm in 1897 and includes photographs of the exhibition setting. The seventh exhibition view shows display case nine, tile fragments on a shelf, carpets hanging on the wall, and a stucco and glass window installed in the wall.

The window is made of a wooden frame filled with perforated stucco. It is divided into two sections, one surmounting the other. The upper one contains a vase with five flowers in bloom. A central tulip is flanked by carnations arranged symmetrically on each side in front of a background with many small, perforated holes. The flower and vase motif is framed by a band of holes in a row forming a polylobed arch on the top. The spandrels show a similar band framing three relatively large openings on each side. The lower square section shows a sixteen-pointed star with an eight-pointed flower in its centre, inscribed in a circle. Like the upper section, the spandrels have a band of holes in a row, but here framing one triangular opening.

Although this is a black and white photograph, it is possible to understand that glass inlays of different colours were used. In the upper section, the square openings in the spandrels, the centres of the carnations, the lines on the neck of the vase, and, in the lower section, the central flower and two drop-shaped openings between the star points were backed with dark pieces of glass.

In the catalogue, the stucco and glass window exhibited between display case 9 and the door is characterized as a window made of plaster and coloured glass fragments. Its provenance is stated to be a mosque in Cairo, and it is dated to the 16th century (‘Fenster aus Gips und farbigen Glasscherben, aus einer Moschee zu Kairo; XVI. Jahrhundert.’; Martins Sammlung, 1897, p. 7).

The window on the photograph corresponds to a window now in the collection of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, on deposit at the Medelhavsmuseet Stockholm (IG_166). While the stucco lattice is of exactly the same design, in terms of colour and placement, the glass as preserved does not fully correspond to that seen in the historical photograph. Replacement of the glass after the General Art and Industry Exhibition in Stockholm in 1897 for conservation reasons would be a possible explanation for this. A lack of weathering on the stucco and glass window casts doubts on Martin’s dating to the 16th century.

Typologically, the flowers in a vase motif in the upper section is one of the most common motifs of stucco and glass windows in Western museum collections (for example IG_361, IG_356, IG_7, IG_190). A window in the collection of the Museum of Arab Art in Cairo in the 19th century shows strong similarities in terms of the shape of the vase and the general arrangement of the flowers (VMR_1387). A picture of this window was widely disseminated, as it was reproduced in several important publications on Islamic art: in 1895, by Max Herz, Catalogue sommaire des monuments exposés dans le Musée national de l’art arabe (IG_161); in 1903, by Julius Franz in Kairo (Berühmte Kunststätten, 21) (IG_237); and in 1907, by Henri Saladin and Gaston Migeon in their Manuel d’art musulman (IG_45). The flowers in a vase typology was also documented and disseminated through published drawings from Cairene and Ottoman contexts, for example in 1877 by Prisse d’Avennes in L’Art arabe d’après les monuments du Kaire depuis le VIIe siècle jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe (IG_43), and in 1873 by Marie de Launay in Die Ottomanische Baukunst / L’Architecture ottomane / Uṣūl-i Miʿmāriyye-i ʿUsmaniyye (IG_225). The lower section with the star motif is not uncommon too. For instance, a very similarly composed panel is held in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (IG_186).

As for the display strategy at the General Art and Industrial Exposition of Stockholm, it seems that a light source was installed behind the window lattice. This means that the stucco and glass window was not exhibited solely as an object, but that its specific quality as a window, the effect of its light, was deliberately staged. Not only was the object shown, but its immaterial quality was also emphasized.