OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1570

This dish is unusually refined and elegant; very appropriate for one owned by the Comtesse de Behague. The saz leaves are unusually thin, particularly when the design is compared to that of lot 9 in this sale. That lot used the same design as here, but only once rather than repeated in four quadrants. Another closely related dish, also of the same form, with six swirling saz leaves each with heart-shaped panels between, is in the Gulbenkian Museum (Maria Queiroz Ribeiro: Iznik Pottery, Lisbon, 1996, no.67, pp.210-211, while a third, with quartered design as here, but divided by broader serrated leaves rather than the current narrower saz leaves, is in the British Museum, formerly in the Godman Colllection (The Arts of Islam, exhibition catalogue, London, 1976, no.416, pp.268-9).