OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1590

Although most animal vessels date from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the type is known as far back as the 1530s. Finds at Iznik have included two blue and white fragments from animal vessels and a third similar piece in the form of a sculpted animal's head (Aslanapa, pp.115, 116, 119 and 149). Later examples, like this one, tend to be on a green or turquoise ground. At the end of the century, the common Chinese wave and scroll border tended to replace the animal borders of the earlier dishes, as also happened with many other designs. For fuller discussions on the group, together with suggestions on its links with Balkan metalwork and its imagery as the garden of paradise see Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby,Iznik, the Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, London, 1989, p.256 and M. Wenzel, 'Early Ottoman silver and Iznik pottery design', Apollo, vol. CXXX, no.331, September 1989.