400 years earlier than Roubo, a beautiful folding book stand from a single large board
On a recent trip to New York, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You could get lost for days in there, and it’s definitely worth doing that once in a while. Wandering around in the relatively new Islamic art wing near the European painting galleries I came across a fantastic, much earlier version of the folding book stand described by Roubo and popularized recently by Roy Underhill. This large stand for a Quran dates from the year 1360, some 400 years before Roubo! It was not a crude version, either; it was beautifully designed and exquisitely crafted, with multiple layers of rich carvings and piercings. The stand was made by Hasan [ibn] Zain ibn Sulaiman al-Isfahani.
Cool. I saw one of these (also Islamic) in the Chicago Art Institute last year.
as a great wiseman once told me:
You are only as original
as your references are obscure
That is beautiful.
Wow, I was just at the Met two weeks ago but I didn’t make it to that Wing. I could have easily spent another day or two there.
Yup.. still made and commonly used for same purpose across the world. I pointed that out to Roy Underhill some time back and he was glad to get the update. I will be traveling to India in a few months and will post some videos on how it is still made and used. Of course one does not need to travel far for that almost any mosque in US will have a few of these.