TAG Talks: An Ancient Tour of Achaemenid Arts and Culture

Seattle Art Museum on Feb 13 2024

TAG Talks: An Ancient Tour of Achaemenid Arts and Culture

SAM’s Teen Arts Group (TAG) is an intensive internship program for high school-aged youth who are eager to learn about themselves and the world through art, and are excited to make SAM a fun and engaging space for teens. TAG members meet weekly from October to May to learn about the behind-the-scenes work of an art museum, lead engaging gallery tours, plan Teen Night Out, and so much more. TAG Talks is an ongoing SAM Blog series on SAM Blog that serves as a space for SAM’s teen leaders to express themselves and their love of art. Keep up with all TAG adventures by following @samteens on Instagram and stay tuned for more TAG Talks to come!

I’m assuming you are confused as to what is happening. Where you are, how you will get back, why you are here, all these questions are dancing in your mind. It’s okay, all will make sense in due time. Here are the basics we should begin with. Yesterday, on your way home from work, you stumbled upon a rectangular, wooden box. The box had the symbol of a lion and a sun engraved on its wooden exterior. Naturally curious, you opened the box and saw spinning gears. The gears seemed to get faster as you continually observed them. That can’t be right; there was nothing powering the box. Yet it was. The gears kept accelerating until they vanished completely and the box was left empty. Confused, you placed your hand inside. This was the turning point. 

Sucked into a cloud of debris, your senses blurred, losing contact with the physical realm. The sensation of disconnect lasted for five or so minutes. Covered in dust, you tumbled to the foot of an elderly woman dressed in robes draped in sweeping folds. Are you beginning to remember now?

I am the woman you met. I welcome you to the sixth century BC Achaemenid Empire. You are one of the first to make it here successfully. I know you may be scared; the Greeks painted our history to be uncivilized compared to their own. Under Cyrus the Great however, our reign has promoted religious tolerance and human rights regardless of nationality. We also contributed to innovations in commerce and trading networks, as well as funding for public works to improve the lives of our people. But that’s all textbook information I doubt you care for. Your purpose here is to travel and explore, that’s it. You’ll be home before you realize, so make the most of your stay.

Our empire is in the lands you now call Egypt, Eastern Europe, and east of Asia to the Balkans. It will go on to be considered one of the largest empires of the ancient world. Even as a resident, I can’t help but marvel at the sheer magnificence of what we have. While you’re visiting, I recommend you see Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of our empire. Thank goodness you are arriving in the springtime. Due to the remoteness of the region, travel is often difficult here during the rainy Persian winters. The mountainous terrain, however, allows the city to remain a secret from the outside world, protecting our art, artifacts, archives, and royal treasury.

Here you’ll also find residential quarters, a treasury, and ceremonial palaces. One palace you can’t miss is the Apādana Receiving Hall. Built by Darius I, the roof of the structure is supported by 72 columns each standing at 24 meters, with the whole palace having the footprint of 1,000 square meters. The column capitals are either twin headed bulls, eagles, or lions to represent authority and kingship. The monumental stairways on the North and East sides depict 23 subject nations bearing gifts to the King. If you tell the King I sent you, he will take you as a guest. Don’t forget to bring some form of tribute though. A cypress tree will do.

One final thing – you will need money and proper clothing. I will give you some gold coins known as daric. Use these at the market and buy yourself some long robes. As the palace welcomes you, you shall be greeted with lavish feasts, drinks, and games. Do wander into the sensuous gardens and hunt if you so please. Alright, now I believe my job here is done. I recommend you embrace the chaos and uncertainty this land will reveal. I’ll send you the box once when you’re ready to go. I wish you the best on your journey. 

– Smriti Tiwari (she/her), 16, Second-Year Teen Arts Group Leader

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

Object of the Week: Book Cover

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 30 2016

Object of the Week: Book Cover

In artspeak, “hierarchy of medium” is a phrase we might throw around to describe the relative importance that painting and sculpture have been given in the museum space historically, as compared to any other form of art-making. At SAM, one aspect of Dr. Fuller’s legacy for which we can be grateful is his openness to collecting art in a range of forms. His interests were his own, but at least they were broad. Consider that between 1938 and 1949 Dr. Fuller purchased for the collection three exquisite book covers, Islamic and Persian, that he had sought out from three different dealers. That means before SAM could claim any of its best-known paintings—before the Cranach, Church, Pollock, Rothko, and a half-century before the iconic Bierstadt—three book covers graced the collection.

Book Cover

The future of printed books seems anything but clear. As a book lover, I mourn this a bit. Digital can’t do it all. I want the whole book experience: the artful cover, the heft of the thing in my hand, the texture of the paper, the reassurance of progress I feel as my bookmark inches from front cover to back cover, and of course the incomparable smell. How sweet to have an opportunity, in SAM’s ancient art galleries, to consider two exceptionally crafted Persian book covers from the Safavid period. Their artistry reminds us of what is possible in this form.

Dr. Fuller purchased the fine example highlighted here from Thomas B.W. Allen, a dealer based in Walla Walla who advertised “Fine Things from Far Places.” Dr. Fuller went to Allen on several occasions for exotic artworks, buying from him, among other things, a Persian Dervish’s begging bowl, a Luristani bronze, a portable Qur’an, Achaemenid seals, an Islamic brass ewer, and a Persian tinned-copper vessel. Allen also gifted SAM a Persian black vessel and a classical vase, reflecting that this gallery-museum relationship, like several others Dr. Fuller enjoyed, was a congenial partnership.

Book Cover

The makers of the Book cover achieved balance and symmetry on a small scale that required a masterful and delicate touch. The central panel features a garden motif that Persian artists applied to a range of decorative objects, including ceramics, metalwork, and carpets. Floral filigree winds across the central panel, inhumanly precise—the taunting of a confident artist. The gilding that appears across the cover gives the book a regal presence that would have conferred a real sense of importance to the contents of the book. A cover this intricate would have convinced me to read what was inside.

Had Dr. Fuller never purchased this book cover or many of the other delicate, unfamiliar things from “far places” you can see in our ancient galleries, they might not be here. With one set of eyes we might see them as mementos of his idiosyncratic collecting, but with another, they exemplify that art knows no cultural or formal boundaries.

—Jeffrey Carlson, SAM Collections Coordinator

Images: Book cover, 16th-17th century, Persian, Safavid period (1501-1722), leather, gilding, 11 1/8 x 6 3/4 x 3/16 in. Seattle Art Museum, Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 49.172, Photo: Natali Wiseman.

Object of the Week: Decorative Astrolabe

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Jun 17 2016

Object of the Week: Decorative Astrolabe

When SAM acquired a quiet and exquisite Persian Decorative astrolabe in 2009, it was enacting a throwback to the collecting philosophy of our founding director, Dr. Richard Fuller. A trained geologist who put great store in studying things closely—in practicing connoisseurship, to use a pretty untrendy word—Fuller aimed to detect the intricacies of art objects through time and attention. He was deeply interested in how things were made, a perpetual tinkerer. He also seems to have enjoyed discovering why things were made a certain way, and especially how they were first used. Many of us won’t think of an object’s function as particularly relevant to an assessment of that thing as art, but it definitely factored into Dr. Fuller’s deliberations.

In his memoir on the founding and growth of SAM, A Gift to the City, Dr. Fuller writes a straightforward apology for the museum’s collecting strategy: “Within our limited means we endeavor to acquire authentic items of high aesthetic quality and, if possible, functional interest. I strive for items that reflect the creative talent of each period and which, in geologic terms, serve as index fossils for their specific time and culture.”1

In sum, he looked for beautiful objects that told stories. In this framework it mattered significantly whether an object visibly reflected a certain people or time or place, and readily apparent signs of an original use or context were coveted. Functional objects were not only not avoided but embraced. There is logic to this: If we want to know something about people who are distanced from us, seeing their stuff and knowing exactly how it is, or was, used can be very helpful.

Decorative Astrolabe, Persian

I love the Persian Decorative astrolabe because it is an “index fossil” of the kind Dr. Fuller was always after, but it also has subtle and crafty ways of teaching us.

First, the ways that it falls into his categories: As the single most important astronomical tool of the Middle Ages, the astrolabe holds great functional interest. Astrolabes were, at one time, widely used by navigators, astronomers, mathematicians, and theologians to solve problems related to the motion of celestial bodies. The astrolabe stands as a symbol of the many scientific accomplishments of an era and the specific culture of medieval Islam. It’s also suitably small. Dr. Fuller bought many little things, maybe reflecting his reserved personality, but definitely reflecting his desire to leverage limited funds to the greatest effect. Finally, it has “high aesthetic quality,” to borrow Dr. Fuller’s geologic nomenclature. Precisely and carefully decorated, it would no doubt have passed this portion of the test. Calligraphic script dances across the surfaces of its interlocking discs, broken up by elegant decorative patterns.

In one clear way SAM’s Decorative astrolabe differs from Dr. Fuller’s expectations. It was likely never functional but always a decorative object. Other technologies began to replace the astrolabe for its functional use in the 17th century; this example, dating to the 19th century, was probably never needed for navigating the seas or charting planetary movements. It’s a vestigial tool, a once-functional object rendered obsolete.

So we look at this object, and it seems to, but doesn’t really, tell us how its original audience related to it. It’s cheeky, throwing us for a loop. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have stories. It just means the stories are different than what we expected to hear. It opens up so many new questions, like why, in the 19th century, in Persia, the memory of the astrolabe remained so strong that an artisan produced this fine example?

Decorative astrolabe, 19th c., Persian, Qajar period (1794-1925), brass, 4×3 in., Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Jeff Strickler, 2009.65.1, Photos: Natali Wiseman.
1 A Gift to the City: A History of the Seattle Art Museum and the Fuller Family, Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1993; p. 24.
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