OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1580

This dish was formerly in the Lagonico Collection, originally assembled by Stefanos Lagonico in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 1920s. The Lagonico family was one of many Greek settlers who took a primary role in the rapid growth of the Egyptian cotton industry. As these Greek families grew in wealth, many began collecting art with a small number focusing on Islamic art, which was seen as an extension of Hellenism. The private collections of the Greek community in Alexandria would go on to form the core of the important 1925 exhibition Exposition d’art Musulman, only the second great exhibition of Islamic art, which was organised at their invitation by the French art historian and scholar, Gaston Migeon, and included pieces from the Lagonico collection.

The distinctive design to the centre of this dish, with the green leaves surrounding clusters of cintamani roundels, can be likened to two vessels published by Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby, Iznik. The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, London, 1989, nos.762 and 763. One of those vessels is a bottle in the British Museum (inv.no.78.12-30.466) and the other is a dish in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (inv.no.2240). Both are attributed to circa 1580-85 and on both what appear on our dish to be green petals are worked such that they are fully-ledged ‘budda lips’ surrounding the cintamani roundels. Our dish is likely a successful simplification of the same very popular motif. Another abstraction of this popular combination is seen on a dish in the Musée national de la Renaissance – Château d’Écouen, (Frédéric Hitzel and Mirelle Jacotin, Iznik. L’Aventure d’Une Collection, Paris, 2005, p.59, no.11). There the ‘budda lips’ are again more recognisable but the cintamani roundels are simplified.

The bole-red colour that forms the background for the central design is employed masterfully here. The thick red was difficult control, and initial efforts produced mixed results. The tiles produced in circa 1561 for the Mosque of Rustem Pasha contained areas of red which were not fully controlled after firing and lost the intensity of their colour (Walter Denny, The Mosque of Rustem Pasha and the Environment of Change, New York, 1977). The beauty of our dish comes as a result of the perfected ability to control the contours of the bole-red to produce a precise and wonderful strong design.