OTTOMAN TURKEY, 18TH CENTURY

In the early 1670s, the Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi noted that, though by then there were only nine tile manufacturers in Iznik, there were thirty-four in the town of Kütahya in Western Anatolia. Productive into the nineteenth century and predominantly staffed by Armenian potters, they produced tiles to decorate both Armenian orthodox churches and monasteries and the mosques and palaces of Muslim patrons. The workshops also produced large quantities of smaller vessels, many of which were exported to Greece or bought by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem to give as votive offerings (J. Carswell, Kütahya Tiles and Pottery from the Armenian Cathedral of St James, Jerusalem, Oxford, 1972, p.16). The present lot is similar in profile to bowls in the British Museum, Musée de Sèvres, and San Lazzaro in Venice (John Carswell, op. cit., p.27). Another example was sold in these Room, 25 April 2013, lot 247.