OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1640

Details

AN IZNIK POTTERY DISH
OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1640
With sloping rim on short foot, the white interior painted in cobalt-blue, green and bole-red, with a central bouquet of red carnations flanked by blue and red floral sprays issuing from the centre with saz leaves, the border painted with scolling blue and green motifs, the base with blue alternating trefoils and simple flowerheads, rim and foot drilled, one hairline crack in rim and another in the on the side, slight chips to rim
11in. (27.8cm.) diam.

Provenance

Ispenian collection, Cairo and Alexandria, circa 1900
Anon sale, Sotheby's London, 12 October 2000, lot 149

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

It is the border design of this dish that makes it stand out. It is a very restrained version of a border which appears in much brighter colouring on a small number of vessels including a dish in the Fitzwilliam Museum (Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby: Iznik, the Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, London, 1989, no.490, p.248). The same design is used at the base of the neck of a pair of spectacular tombak candlesticks commissioned for the mosque of Sultan Bayezid in Edirne in around 1488 (David Roxburgh (ed.): Turks, London, 20005, no.256, pp.299 and 441-2). An almost identical design, but with the leaves pointing forward in the same direction as the stem flows, is known on a few more Iznik pieces including two dishes in the Gulbenkian Collection (Maria Queiroz Ribeiro: Iznik Pottery, Lisbon, 1996, nos. 78 and 79, pp.230-233), a dish and a small footed tazza in the Musée National de la Renaissance, Écouen (Walter Denny: The Artistry of Ottoman Ceramics, London, 2004, pp.164 and 165) and a related tazza in the Hetjens Museum, Düsseldorf (Johanna Zick-Nissen: Islamische Keramik, exhibition catalogue, Düsseldorf, 1973, no.331, p.227).

More from IZNIK POTTERY: THE VINCENT BULENT COLLECTION

View All