OTTOMAN TURKEY, 17TH CENTURY

This elegant pomegranate bears close resemblance, in both shape and technique, to a 17th century Ottoman one set into the centre of a lavish Russian yoke now in the Kremlin Armory Museum in Moscow (The Tsars and the East. Gifts from Turkey and Iran in the Moscow Kremlin, exhibition catalogue, Washington DC, 2009, inv.no.TK-41; pp.119-120, no.61). The technique of decorating objects with gold floral or vegetal panels set with gems is characteristic of the Ottoman aesthetic. From the 16th century the Ottomans decorated jewellery, weapons and vessels in this manner and it is probable that our panel once adorned an object of this type.