Vanity Box 1764 - 1814

Muhammad Baqir created this delightful vanity box, showcasing a garden scene, sometime in the late eighteenth century. It is teeming with flowers and birds, symbols that resonate deeply within Persian art, poetry, and beyond. The nightingale, or bulbul, perched amongst the blossoms, is no mere decoration. It is a potent symbol of love, longing, and the pursuit of the divine. The rose and the nightingale create a powerful image, one that has echoed through centuries, evoking intense emotion. We find the echo of this coupling in earlier Sufi poetry, where the nightingale's desperate song for the rose mirrors the soul's yearning for union with God. It speaks to a collective memory, of human desire, and spiritual connection. Such imagery, steeped in layers of meaning, continues to resurface, evolving through time, yet still tapping into the same wellspring of human emotion.