OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1570

This rare and visually striking jug has the coloured ground that featured on a few Iznik wares from the 1550s. At this time potters in Iznik were using a variety of coloured slips (liquid clay) to cover the bodies of their wares. They then added detailed designs in slips of contrasting colours and paint. The technique appears about the time that relief red was introduced, but was never widely used; sherds of excavated slipware at Iznik show that it was definitely an Iznik product; see O. Aslanapa, "Pottery and Kilns from the Iznik Excavations", Forschungen zur Kunst Asiens in Memoriam Kurt Erdmann, Istanbul, 1970, pp.143, 151, 152, 181. The slipware may well be a later development of the older tradition of slip-decorated pottery at Iznik of the so-called 'Miletus' type. That it was exported can be deduced from slipware sherds in recent excavations close to the Cathedral of St George in Thessalonika. A dish in the Kean Lagonico Collection (No.37) decorated in underglaze lavender, green and relief red with a cintimani design, has a lavender slipped base, confirming the contemporaneity of the two techniques. For another contemporaneous vessel using a more subtle monochrome slip design please see lot 116.

Lavender-ground slip-decorated examples of Iznik ware include three dishes in the Musée de la Renaissance, Ecouen (inv. nos. CI.8329, 8550, 8549), all acquired in Rhodes between 1865-1878. A lavender-ground tankard in the Louvre (inv. no. A.A.403) is also decorated in red and white slip with dark grey outlines, and carnations identical to those on this jug. The coral-like stems on the jug are not unlike those on a unique white sherd decorated with relief red excavated at Iznik in 1987, see Aslanapa, p.307.

Two examples of lavender slip Iznik pottery sold at auction include a dish sold in these Rooms, 6 October 2011, lot 302, and a tankard sold at Sotheby’s London, 20 April, 2016, lot 85.