{
"data": {
"id": 124420,
"accession_number": "1945.383",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device (recto); Text Page, Arabic Prose (verso), 1315. Syria, Damascus, Mamluk Period, 14th Century. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; overall: 31.3 x 21.5 cm (12 5/16 x 8 7/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1945.383",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device (recto); Text Page, Arabic Prose (verso)",
"creation_date": "1315",
"creation_date_earliest": 1315,
"creation_date_latest": 1315,
"artists_tags": [],
"culture": [
"Syria, Damascus, Mamluk Period, 14th Century"
],
"technique": "opaque watercolor and gold on paper",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Islamic Art",
"collection": "Islamic Art",
"type": "Manuscript",
"measurements": "Overall: 31.3 x 21.5 cm (12 5/16 x 8 7/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"overall": {
"height": 0.313,
"height_inch": 12,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.3125,
"width": 0.215,
"width_inch": 8,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.4375
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "verso script: Naskh",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 312146,
"title": "Islamic Art",
"description": "Islamic Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 3, 1944-February 2, 1945).",
"opening_date": "1944-11-03T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 701305,
"title": "The Bird in Art",
"description": "The Bird in Art. Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA (organizer) (June 6-August 12, 1956).",
"opening_date": "1956-06-06T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 519268,
"title": "Muslim Miniature Paintings",
"description": "Muslim Miniature Paintings. Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, Italy, Venezia, Italy (organizer) (September 1-October 31, 1962); The Asia Society Museum, New York, NY (December 4, 1962-February 3, 1963).",
"opening_date": "1962-09-01T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 203147,
"title": "Myth and Mystique: Cleveland's Gothic Table Fountain",
"description": "Myth and Mystique: Cleveland's Gothic Table Fountain. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 9, 2016-February 26, 2017).",
"opening_date": "2016-10-09T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "(Hagop Kevorkian [1872\u20131962], New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "?-1945",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1945-",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "The mouth of the peacock acts as a spigot pouring water; the figure emerged from a small door and offers soap to the hand washer.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "This leaf from a 1315 Syrian copy of Ibn al-Razz\u0101z al-Jazar\u012b\u2019s The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, written in 1206, depicts a peacock basin automaton for ritual hand washing. There are 15 surviving manuscript copies of al-Jazar\u012b\u2019s work, ranging from the early 13th to the late 19th century. An engineer from upper Mesopotamia, al-Jazar\u012b was in the service of King Nasr\u012b al-D\u012bn when he completed his masterwork, an anthology of automated devices including clocks, trick vessels for drinking sessions, devices for washing, fountains, water-raising machines, and measuring instruments. His designs clearly illustrate that automata were not innovations from Western Europe, but they stemmed from a tradition known in the ancient, Islamic, and Byzantine worlds. We do not know with certainty that al-Jazar\u012b\u2019s device was ever actually constructed.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79902302"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1945.383-peacock-shaped-hand"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Hollis, Howard. \"Page from an Automata Manuscript.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 33, no. 6 (June 1946): 85-87.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 82; Mentioned: p. 85",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25141286"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 717",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1958/page/n131"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 221",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1966/page/n245"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 221",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1969/page/n245"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 278",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n298"
},
{
"citation": "Suchman, Lucille Alice. Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2007.",
"page_number": "Cover",
"url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/humanmachine-reconfigurations/9D53E602BA9BB5209271460F92D00EFE"
},
{
"citation": "Fliegel, Stephen N., and Elina Gertsman. Myth and Mystique: Cleveland's Gothic Table Fountain. 2016.",
"page_number": "pp. 104-107, Cat. no. 4",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Mikolic, Amanda. The Art of Handwashing. The Cleveland Museum of Art The Thinker Blog on Medium. April 10, 2020.",
"page_number": null,
"url": "https://medium.com/cma-thinker/the-art-of-handwashing-515bf9ea5343"
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1945.383",
"images": {
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"date_created": "2013-03-21T19:25:47",
"annotation": ""
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],
"creditline": "Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 124420,
"creators": [],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1945-12-06T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1315,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1315",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "cover",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [
"A Device for Washing the Hands: Illustration from a Manuscript of the Automata (or Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices) by Inb al-Razza al-Jazari"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 06:25:00.573000"
}
}