OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1600

Details

AN IZNIK POTTERY DISH
OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1600
The white ground painted under the glaze in cobalt-blue, green and bole-red with a central rosette surrounded by a band of tight spirals and a trefoil design extending into the cavetto, the rim with similar spirals set with alternating rosettes and palmette motifs, the reverse with alternating rosettes and trefoil pendant motifs, an old collection sticker to the base, a drill hole to the foot, a small chip to the rim
11 1/4in. (28.5cm.) diam.

Provenance

Victor Adda, Alexandria and Rome (d.1965) and thence by descent

Brought to you by

Behnaz Atighi Moghaddam Head of Sale

batighi@christies.com +44 20 7389 2509

Lot Essay

This dish is unusual for the ground of tight black spirals upon which elements of the design are set. In the 1570s and 80s it became popular in Iznik to enliven the background of vessels. The most common means of doing this was the fish-scale motif, seen for instance on a jug that sold in these Rooms, 28 October 2021, lot 86. Another device however was spirals such as those seen here, familiar from contemporaneous wave-and-rock borders. The earliest date for this treatment was around 1560 but at that stage the spirals were done in white slip (Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby, Iznik, the Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, London, 1989, p.249). It is particularly uncommon for the spirals to be used as the background to the rim design, as here, when not as part of the wave-and-rock motif.

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