MOROCCAN, FEZ or MEKNES, 19th CENTURY

Tall bowl (Jobbana) with geometric designs

Tin-glazed earthenware with over-glaze painting

7 inches high, 10 ½ inches diameter

Provenance:   

Collection of Emily Johnston De Forest and Robert Weeks De Forest, New York, by 1911-until 1942; thence by descent until 2018.

This beautifully decorated earthenware pot is a striking example of a 19th-century Moroccan jobbana. Traditionally accompanied by a domed or bell-shaped lid with a finial top, these vessels originally were used to store butter and cheese or to churn milk. The name, jobbana, derives from the Arabic word for cheese—jubna. The exterior of the bowl is decorated with ornamental motifs in bright blue applied over a yellow under-glaze. The organic diamond shapes separated by bands of intricate filigree and geometric patterns mirrored top and bottom are characteristic of ceramicware from Fez and Meknes,[1] as is the reddish color of the clay visible beneath the yellow glaze and in the few areas of small losses. The blue oxide used on vessels of this type allow us to date our jobbana to the middle of the 19th century. An example executed on a similar scale and retaining its original lid is in the Brooklyn Museum (Fig. 1).[2]

This vessel was formerly in the collection of Emily Johnston De Forest—the daughter of the Metropolitan Museum’s first president, John Taylor Johnston—and her husband, Robert, both founders of the American Wing of the museum. Emily De Forest was an avid collector of folk pottery, and following a visit to Mexico in 1904, she formed a significant collection of the celebrated tin-glazed earthenware produced in the town of Puebla de los Angeles, known as Talavera poblana, much of which was gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1911.  These works are significant as the first glazed ceramics produced in the Americas. [3] Emily and Robert De Forest retained several pieces from their collection for their family, and it is from their descendants that the bowl presented here comes. It is possible that Emily De Forest bought this work as an example to be compared with her Talavera poblana, as the forms and decoration of these ceramics often derived from Asian and Hispano-Islamic designs.

[1] Vincent Boele, Morocco: 5000 Years of Culture, Amsterdam, 2005. p. 175.

[2] Brooklyn Museum, New York, New York; Moroccan Jobbana, accession number 171536.

[3] Robert De Forest, later President of the Metropolitan Museum himself, shared his wife’s interest in the arts of Mexico. Their collection of Mexican ceramics was shown to the public in a landmark exhibition at the Hispanic Society of America in 1911, accompanied by a catalogue by the distinguished archaeologist Edwin Atlee Barber.