The qalam

The different sections and holes in the interior of the pen case are for holding the different tools of calligraphy: the reed pen, or qalam, in the larger section, the ink in the other, and sand used for blotting and string for cleaning the pens in the smaller holes.Eiren L Shea, ‘The Mongol Cultural Legacy in East and Central Asia: The Early Ming and Timurid Courts’, Ming Studies, 78 (2018), p. 44. Both the internal and external surfaces are glazed, with only the lip where the lid would sit remaining unglazed (this must have been a practical choice to allow better grip when the case was closed). As much attention has been applied to the appearance of the interior as to the exterior of the case; this pen case was designed to be a useful object, as well as a beautiful one.

Calligraphy was placed above all other arts in Persia due to its association with the writing of the Qur’an, and the qalam was similarly esteemed. In his ‘Treatise on Calligraphers and Painters’, Qazi Ahmad discusses how the qalam was the first thing created by God, and that inspiration for writing flowed through it.Qazi Ahmad Qomi, Calligraphers and Painters: A Treatise by Qadi Ahmad, son of Mir Munshi (circa A.H. 1015/1606), trans. and ed. Vladimir Minorsky. Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Papers, 3:2 (Washington, DC, 1959, 2016 Interactive Online Edition), p. 49. The pen case received a similar high status through association, and was a long-standing symbol of royal power, erudition, and ministerial office at Persian courts. Though this porcelain pen case is not comparable with the bejewelled gold cases used by the court, it would still have retained these prestigious associations.

How and why, then, was a case for holding the qalam used for writing Persian script produced in China? Metal pencases, and earlier ivory and wooden cases, had been produced in Iran for centuries. From the fifteenth century, such cases were imported into China and used as a model for ceramics. Studies have generally assumed that this was done solely to appeal to the Islamic export market. However, there is evidence that porcelain pen boxes were also produced for the use of officials in the Beijing language academy established in 1407.

A similar category of objects embedded in the transcultural nature of blue-and-white is that of porcelain brush rests with Persian or Arabic inscriptions that were produced for Chinese scholars. An early sixteenth-century example of this can be seen elsewhere on the Things That Talk website. The motifs and surface coverage are similar to those of the David Collection pen case, bringing into question previous suggestions that such dense designs were not to Chinese tastes.