LATE MAMLUK, 15TH CENTURY

Details

A DAMASCUS POTTERY BORDER TILE
LATE MAMLUK, 15TH CENTURY
Of thick rectangular form, the white ground decorated in turquoise, cobalt-blue and black with a reciprocal design of white and cobalt-blue trefoil palmettes each filled with smaller palmettes with emerging leafy arabesques, plain turquoise borders above and below, chips to the glaze, minor areas of repainting particularly around the edges
3 5/8 x 9 1/8in. (9 x 23.2cm.)

Provenance

Adda Family Collection, formed in Alexandria in the first half of the 20th century.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

The pattern or reciprocal trefoil design is one of the most classic Islamic borders, found with variants in many countries and periods. The present border tile has much in common with Ottoman 16th century designs. The Dome of the Rock has a border of reciprocal trefoils, one half of which are filled with a design almost identical to that found here, while the other half have a design that uses black as a colour for the motifs (Oleg Grabar and Saïd Nusseibeh, Le Dôme du Rocher, Paris 1997, p.42). The drawing of the present tile panel however has more freedom in the handling of the design, indicative of late Mamluk pottery from Damascus where exactly these colours were also used. The tile is also unusually thick, much more so than any tile from Ottoman Iznik or Damascus, also clearly indicating an earlier date.

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