TURKEY, 18TH CENTURY

The tradition of Ottoman cut-paper compositions goes back to the 16th century. An album of calligraphy in the Istanbul University Library, with works by the famous master Shah Mahmud Nishapuri, was illuminated in Turkey in the 16th century and decorated with panels of cut-out paper depicting paradise gardens. The tradition continues well into the 17th and 18th century as attested by an album of poems of Mahmud Gaznevi written for Sultan Mehmed III (r. 1595-1603), dated 1685 AD, also in the Istanbul University Library (N. Atasoy, Splendours of the Ottoman Sultans, Istanbul, 1992, pp.140-143). The cut-out panels were inserted within these lavish albums, equal to the finest calligraphic compositions, indicating how highly regarded they were in the eyes of the Ottoman elite. Other examples were originally designed to be inserted in small pieces of furniture such as scribe's cabinets and caskets, see for instance a writing box in the Topkapi Palace Museum Library decorated with a view of the Bosphorus from the Rumeli Hills (The Anatolian Civilisations, exhibition catalogue, Istanbul, 1983, pp.296-297, cat. E321). The composition is signed by an artist, Dervish Hasan Eyyubi and is dated to the first quarter of the 18th century.