OTTOMAN TURKEY, 1575-1600

The special clay used for the production of these jugs was sourced on the volcanic island of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea, from which the name Terra Lemnia is derived. It was popularly supposed to have medicinal properties, including the prevention against poison, stomach aches and the plague. After the Ottoman conquest of the island in 1453, the Ottoman governor of the island presided over an annual ceremony whose origins lay in antiquity, to dig up the clay on 6 August each year, for a period of six hours.

A number of these vessels are known with incised and applied ornament, painting and gilding. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has a number of examples, as do the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum in London. For more information on Terra Lemnia pottery, see Julian Raby, ‘Terra Lemnia and the potteries of the Golden Horn: An antique revival under Ottoman auspices’, Bosphorus: Essays in Honor of Cyril Mango, 1995, pp.305-42.