OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1565

These tiles are of particular note because of the survival of the olive-brown colour used in the stems, which recalls the 'Damascus' style of the mid 16th century. It is used, for instance, on the prunus panel of the wall of the portico of the Rüstam Pasha Mosque in Istanbul (ca.1561). A near identical tile panel, but formed of sixteen square tiles and with a palmette border, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York gifted to them by J. Pierpoint Morgan in 1917 (Yanni Petsopoulos (ed.), Tulips, Arabesques and Turbans. Decorative Arts from the Ottoman Empire, London, 1982, no.128, p.134). Another is in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (John Carswell, Iznik Pottery for the Ottoman Empire, exhibition catalogue, Doha, 2003, no.21, pp.80-81). Tiles with similar repeating patterns incorporating floral escutcheons decorate the Takyeci Ibrahim Aga Mosque in Istanbul, built in 1592, and the design continued to be popular in the early seventeenth century. A similar panel is now on view in the Louvre (Sophie Makariou (ed.), Islamic Art at The Musée de Louvre, Paris, 2012, pl. 182 p313). A closely related panel sold in these Rooms, 10 October 2013, lot 120.