Honorary Senator Manfred Bumiller began collecting Islamic art in 1980.
In the Bumiller Collection, the pre-Mongol metalwork of Khurasan and Mawarannahr was long regarded as a single, undifferentiated unit. Archaeological excavations are especially important for studying metalwork, since they make it possible to localize more accurately objects held in dozens of museums and private collections worldwide and known as “Khurasanian”. An important discovery was made in 1987 of a large hoard of bronze objects at the archaeological site of Budrach, the ruins of the medieval city of Saghaniyan, the capital of the eponymous principality.
Cast ewers with pear-shaped bodies and beak-like spouts are other typical examples of items produced in Mawarannahr. Besides their unusual shape, which it is impossible to confuse with other ewers, many of them have an engraved Kufic inscription with the name of the artisan Akhmad. Scholars cannot agree exactly where they were made.
Currently about 40 ewers from the Akhmad group are known, five of which are in the Bumiller Collection. Apparently that is the largest number of them in any single museum or private collection. Two of them are in excellent condition, permitting a comprehensive understanding of the group’s characteristic features. One of the ewers has a dimpled decoration, a medallion and the inscription “Akhmad’s work”. The second one, besides the dimples, is decorated on the upper part of its body with engraved triangles enclosing vegetative ornaments. This decorative variation is an innovative addition to the traditional designs and testifies to the creativity of the artisan Akhmad or his apprentices and imitators.
You can learn more about the topic in the book-album "Collections of the Federal Republic of Germany" (volume XI) in the series "Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collections".
The main sponsor of the project is the oilfield services company Eriell-Group.