Lot Essay
The arms and initials on this dish are certain indications of a specific European commission. Only one other known dish has these features, a smaller dish of similar form now in the Berlin Museum (Atasoy and Raby, no.752, and p.266). The same authors note the existence of our dish (op.cit., ch.XXIV, note 12, p.377). They suggest that the Berlin dish was very possibly made for Andszej Taranowski. The present dish, while the 'arms' are very similar to the other, must have been for a different patron as the initials have no similarity, not even ending with the same last letter.
The shape of our dish is also known to have been made principally for export. It is a well-known maiolica shape, but one that is rarely used at Iznik. The group of ten Iznik dishes bearing the same central arms (op.cit., pls.575-586) all have the same shape. Even a dish sold in these rooms (23 April 1991 lot 137) of this shape but without any obvious European features, had the large initials C F R engraved in a seventeenth century hand on the reverse.
Atasoy,N. and Raby,J.: Iznik, the Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, London 1989
The shape of our dish is also known to have been made principally for export. It is a well-known maiolica shape, but one that is rarely used at Iznik. The group of ten Iznik dishes bearing the same central arms (op.cit., pls.575-586) all have the same shape. Even a dish sold in these rooms (23 April 1991 lot 137) of this shape but without any obvious European features, had the large initials C F R engraved in a seventeenth century hand on the reverse.
Atasoy,N. and Raby,J.: Iznik, the Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, London 1989