PROBABLY DIYARBEKIR, EASTERN TURKEY, OR BALKANS, 18TH CENTURY

A very similar ewer and basin, although with considerably less well preserved gilding, was sold in these Rooms 23 October 2007, lot 116. For a further similar ewer see Sotheby's London, 18 April 2007, lot 194. There they note another example, although re-gilded, which is on display at the Wallace Collection in London. The form and decoration are based on a very similar form demonstrated by one in the museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, Istanbul (The Anatolian Civilisations exhibition catalogue, Istanbul, 1983, vol.II, no.E.283, p.273), while a further example is in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin (Jens Kröger and Désirée Haider, Islamischer Kunst in berliner Sammlungen, Berlin, 2004, no.59, p.78). Most interesting is an example in Milan where the enamelling on the ewer is applied directly to the body, but that on the basin is in roundels as here. That ewer also bears the crudely engraved ownership tughra of Fatima Sultan Khan and the date AH 1120/1708-9 AD (Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Tessuti-Sculture - Metalli Islamici, Milan, 1987, cat.no.11, pp.279-280 and pls.23-25, pp.302-3).