102993 | GREAT BRITAIN & IRAN. "Hands and Grille I" cast gilt bronze Plaque.

102993  |  GREAT BRITAIN, IRAN & CANADA. "Hands and Grille I" cast gilt bronze openwork Plaque. Issued 2006 (92mm x 63mm, 148.88 g, 12h). By Parviz Tanavoli for the British Art Medal Society, and cast by Sarber Jewellers in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

 

Two hands clinging to a grill // Fingertips of those same two hands on the grill bars. Edge: Plain.

 

The Medal 50, p. 66, 2 & p. 95 (and also serving as the front and back cover art for the issue); Silich I, 392. Essentially as Made. Brassy yellow surfaces, with an intricately tactile nature. Fairly scarce and impressive, with a total output of just 60 pieces. Compare to a similar example, the aforementioned Silich specimen, which realized a total of £2,480 (≈ $3,161) in March 2024 [Noonan's], and a vastly inferior example which realized a total of £1,750 (≈ $2,160) in June 2022 [Ewbank's].

 

In The Medal 50, the writeup for this medal mentions that "...Parviz Tanavoli was born in Tehran in 1937. He trained at Tehran's High School for Fine Arts and the Accademia di Belle Arti, Carrara, Italy, and from 1958 to 1960 worked under Marino Marini at the Brera Academy in Milan. After a spell of teaching at the Minneapolis College of Arts and Design, USA, he returned to Iran, where he was head of sculpture at Tehran University until 1979. He is now Iran's foremost sculptor and lives in Tehran and Vancouver, Canada. Hands and Grille is one of Tanavoli's first medals. The artist explains: 'I was inspired by Shi'ite Pilgrims who grab the grilles of shrines and talk to their Imam and ask him for help.'"

 

A further article in the same publication written by Marcy Leavitt Bourne provides further context on the basis for this medal. "Tanavoli has worked not only on a very large scale but also on a small scale, in making jewellery, and therefore, when invited by Philip Attwood to make a medal for BAMS, he was intrigued. 'I didn't have any idea that medals had come so far. The British Museum really opened a door. The scale didn't scare me. It was not unfamiliar to me. But what I have tried to do is to reduce, to minimise, to concentrate these themes on a smaller scale. I said, 'Okay, let me do something that I have done before, but in a larger scale in bronze, and I will do these in a smaller scale.' The medal Hands and Grille, produced for BAMS, in a curious way relates to locks. At first sight of the obverse, one might identify in one's imagination with someone contained or trapped, looking to the outside. Quite the reverse is true. These small, rounded hands, with delicate digits, each gently inserted into the grid, belong to a supplicant, clinging from the outside to the grille that surrounds the tomb (emamzadeh) of an Imam, asking, hoping, that the problems they have brought to him will be unlocked in his presence. This is a theme I have been working with, inspired from the Shi'ite Muslims who go to the shrines and put their hands on the grilles. They can say their vows, and they pray, and they can talk to the Imam. They have a lively conversation with their Imam. It is very impressive, actually, to see all these hands on these grilles, hundreds of them? Within the shrine, made in the manner of a small room, is the tomb of an Imam, one usually of some historic importance. Unlike, for instance, the Catholic confessional, where one receives an answer, here the faithful worshippers must solve their own problems. 'They tie strings to the grilles. The string is symbolic of locks, as they were traditionally used in locks. With the string you lock up. You make a knot and lock it up to the grille in order to unlock your problems. The philosophy is that to touch the grille is a reminder of the holy man who is buried there. You tie something up with a lock in order to remind him of your wish, and you hope by tying it, by locking the lock, that it unlocks your problems.' In the Middle East the imagery of the grille would resonate immediately. With what Westernised eyes one looks at works of art from another culture. The medal is about neither prison nor politics, but about the life of the soul. The reverse of the medal would be the view across the tomb, seeing on the opposite side all the fingers of those praying to the Imam. One could almost see them as rows of little heads, in a different scale. From both front and back, the hands are contained within the grille framework, overlapping only where the wrist would come, were they more realistic. The thumb is faceted, starting with a slightly inclined tip, not rounded, but as if it were the beginning of a letter, written with a large downward sweep of a calligraphic brush. Multiple meanings are vested in hands, in art from the Middle East perhaps even more so than in Western art. Because depiction of the human form is proscribed by the Shi'ite faith, the human hand expresses a whole artistic language for the sculptor."

 

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Upload: 17 February 2025.