Two pages with Persian calligraphy.

1. A page with two Persian poems, in fine and very elegant nasta'liq script, cut out and pasted on piece of cardboard (27,50 x 17,50 cm; green margin, on the back some scriblings). In the middle two verses from a "ghazal" (love poem) by Sa'dī Shirazi (ca. 1219-1291) (ed. Khatib-e Rahbar, Tehran 1987, vol. 2, no. 553, vv. 3-4): “Everyone in whose sight you come, even once/in his heart you come a hundred times!// When you walk along, the heart follows you/ when you come back, you foster the soul!”. Around these verses are pasted two verses from a ghazal by his fellow townsman Hâfez (1325-1390) (ed. Khânlari, 1983, vol. 2, no. 100; vv. 1-2): “May his beauty be the sun of everybody’s eye!/ May his face, by its beauty, be more beautiful than Beauty itself!// May the heart of the kings of the world be under the wings/of his hair, rival of the homâ [a bird of good luck], with its plumes of a royal falcon!”. - 2. A page of "siyâh-mashq" ("black practice") (20,50 x 8 cm), “a sheet on which a calligrapher has written rows of letters and letter combinations for practice” (see Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. "Calligraphy"), dated 1287/1870-71. Background brown decorated with golden scrolling, within a threefold margin, one with tiny blue/red flowers, against a golden background; one with gold/red rulings; one with minute blue flowers against a brown background.