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Lot Essay
The present bowl is one of a very small number of vessels decorated on top of a coloured slip ground. The potting of the original vessel is very delicate. The drawing is similarly elegantly restrained, allowing the beautiful ground colour to show itself at its best. A very similar jug is in the Sadberk Hanim Museum, Istanbul (Hülya Bilgi (intro by), Reunited after Centuries, Istanbul, 2005, no.15, pp.50-51). The layout is very similar indeed, the main medallions painted on white slip ground, and the elements of the design, including the very small çintamani roundels separating the motifs are directly comparable. Similar arabesque panels to those near the rim are on a lavender ground dish formerly in the Ralph Brocklebank Collection and now at Magdalen College, Oxford (Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby, Iznik, the Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, London, 1989, no.682, pp.300-301). Both these comparison pieces are painted, as here, with some motifs on a white slip ground. The decoration on them however, as well as being in black, is painted in a red slip. The present bowl, instead of the red, uses the manganese colour that is much more typical of the 'Damascus' palette of the 1540s than the brighter tones of the 1560s. It is probable that this is one of the earliest examples of slip painted wares, dateable to circa 1550.
A bowl in the Louvre dated to 1550-1565, of very similar form but on a spreading trumpet foot that this bowl never had, is painted on a coral slip ground with white border around the rim (Walter Denny, Iznik, the Artistry of Ottoman Ceramics, London, 2004, pl.p.54).
A bowl in the Louvre dated to 1550-1565, of very similar form but on a spreading trumpet foot that this bowl never had, is painted on a coral slip ground with white border around the rim (Walter Denny, Iznik, the Artistry of Ottoman Ceramics, London, 2004, pl.p.54).