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Lot Essay
Dikran Garabed Kelekian (1868–1951), by whom this dish was lent to the 1910 Munich exhibition, was born to Armenian parents in Kayseri, when it was an important city of the Ottoman Empire. He opened a gallery in Istanbul in 1892 and showed "Persian" works at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He and his brother Kevork went on to establish galleries in Paris, London, Cairo, and New York where they sold Middle Eastern art and attracted the major collectors of their time.
A dish with similar fish scale design divided between green and blue is in the Ömer M. Koç collection (Hülya Bilgi, Dance of Fire. Iznik Tiles and Ceramics in the Sadberk Hanim Museum and Ömer M. Koç Collections, exhibition catalogue, Istanbul, 2009, p.295). Like ours the Koç dish combines this feature with a cavetto decorated with repeating lappets. It is dated to circa 1580-90.
A dish with similar fish scale design divided between green and blue is in the Ömer M. Koç collection (Hülya Bilgi, Dance of Fire. Iznik Tiles and Ceramics in the Sadberk Hanim Museum and Ömer M. Koç Collections, exhibition catalogue, Istanbul, 2009, p.295). Like ours the Koç dish combines this feature with a cavetto decorated with repeating lappets. It is dated to circa 1580-90.