A DAMASCUS TILE PANEL

OTTOMAN SYRIA, CIRCA 1560

Details

A DAMASCUS TILE PANEL
OTTOMAN SYRIA, CIRCA 1560
Comprising fifteen tiles, each painted in cobalt-blue, black and turquoise on a white ground with a central rosette issuing blue split palmettes containing cloudband-motifs and flanking four black palmettes, three tiles reduced, otherwise intact, framed together
37¼ x 23½ in. (94.5 x 59.7 cm.)

Provenance

Anon sale in these rooms, 4 April 2006, lot 116

Brought to you by

Andrew Butler-Wheelhouse

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Lot Essay

An identical tile panel is in the Robert Mouawad Private Museum in Beirut, formerly the house of Henri Pharaon (John Carswell, (ed.), The Future of the Past, the Robert Mouawad Private Museum, Beirut, u.d. (2005), no. 103, pp. 268-9). Tiles from exactly this cartoon can also be found in the Salimiye madrasa in Damascus dating from 1566. They however use the full Damascus palette including apple-green. The palette seen here, including the use of designs filled as well as outlined in black, is exactly that of the mosque lamp made in AH 956/1549 AD for the Dome of the Rock that is now in the British Museum (Yanni Petsopoulos, Tulips, Arabesques and Turbans, exhibition catalogue, London, 1982, no. 87, p. 93 and pl. p. 107 amongst other publications).

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