Featured South Asian/Persian painting

I found this today. I was quite chuffed with it. Nice South Asian little painting in a crap modern frame. I took it out of the frame to see what medium it was painted on and it's a piece of plastic. Flipping plastic. Kind of taken the shine off it now

 

Are you sure it is plastic and not bone? These 'miniatures' are generally painted on camel/dromedary bone.

It is a nice one. It was probably in an inlaid Persian frame.

 

Feels like plastic and bends like it. Id not considered that it could be bone. Maybe it is. Regardless of what it's on, it is good quality as you say.

I have another similar drawing that is in a micromosaic frame. I thought that this might have come in something similar originally, and was going to try and find something more appropriate to do it justice.

 

It deserves it. You can still find those for a reasonable price, at least overhere.

 

Yeah there are loads of touristy bits about. I'll try the charity shops. If that fails I can always go to eBay..

How do I ascertain if it's bone?

 

It was a bit of a poke in the eye

I can live with celluloid. At least it's got some history.

 

That's a difficult one, because these Persian and Turkish paintings are generally on bleached bone, so you won't see any hairlines or dots. But bone fluoresces, so a UV light helps.

 

Ah okay. I have unhappy memories of my plastic amber necklace glowing too.

 

Yellow pigments tend to glow or fluoresce, usually glow rather than fluoresce. Plus a UV test never gives you 100% proof.

 

I have had another look and I can't see it being anything other than plastic. On closer inspection though, the painting appears to be on a fine laminate sitting on top of the plastic. I have tried to capture this but a bit difficult.

 

When I click on your photo I can see that it is layered. So probably painted on bone, backed with plastic or celluloid.

 

Amazing how they sliced the bone so thin.

 

It looks like two layers of something from here too. That may be the original frame. I've seen that backing on later Persian pieces with the inlaid frames too. Unless the original was damaged and this one happened to fit the original backing?