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Lot Essay
The fish-scale design on Iznik pottery seems to be connected with pottery traditions in Western Europe and the Far East. Similar fish-scale appears on the body of a mythical beast on a Yuan-dynasty plate in the Topkapi Palace Museum (Morris Rossabi, Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, Washington D.C., 2009, fig.30.8, p.228). Similar decoration also appears around the rim of Italian majolica dishes from the mid-16th century (Frédéric Hitzel and Mireille Jacotin, Iznik: l'aventure d'une collection, Paris, 2005, p.71). Among the earliest-documented uses of the 'fish scale' design in Iznik pottery is, rather aptly, on a jug in the shape of a fish in the Benaki Museum, Athens, dating from around 1525 (inv.no.10, Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby, Iznik, the Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, London, 1989, no.451, pl.124, p.106). The decoration, however, soon became abstracted and was applied to all manner of vessels in order to lend texture to a monochrome ground: it was used on Damascus ware in the 1540s, such as a remarkable dish in the Musée de la Renaissance, Chateau d'Ecouen (inv.no.Cl.9419, Hitzel and Jacotin, op.cit., no.49).
With the introduction of bole-red into Iznik pottery, the design reached its mature form. Most commonly, fields of blue and green interlocking scales were divided by red and white saz leaves or split palmettes. Particularly closely comparable to this tankard for the drawing of those palmettes is a dish which sold in these Rooms, 6 October 2011. The additional palmettes in each oval, shaped on our example like inverted hearts, are similar to a ewer with an entirely green field which sold Bonhams London, 29 April 2004, lot 194. Very similar in decoration is an unusual lidded bowl in the Koç collection (Hülya Bilgi, The Ömer Koç Iznik Collection, Istanbul, 2015, no.139).
The cylindrical tankard seems to have originated in Ottoman ceramics in the early 16th century: the Diwan i-Slimi of 1515-20 includes a drawing of one, apparently being used as a flowerpot (Atasoy and Raby, op.cit., p.47). Few tankard forms with the fish-scale design are known although another tankard with tulips separating the colour fields sold Sotheby’s London, 24 April 2013, lot 243.
With the introduction of bole-red into Iznik pottery, the design reached its mature form. Most commonly, fields of blue and green interlocking scales were divided by red and white saz leaves or split palmettes. Particularly closely comparable to this tankard for the drawing of those palmettes is a dish which sold in these Rooms, 6 October 2011. The additional palmettes in each oval, shaped on our example like inverted hearts, are similar to a ewer with an entirely green field which sold Bonhams London, 29 April 2004, lot 194. Very similar in decoration is an unusual lidded bowl in the Koç collection (Hülya Bilgi, The Ömer Koç Iznik Collection, Istanbul, 2015, no.139).
The cylindrical tankard seems to have originated in Ottoman ceramics in the early 16th century: the Diwan i-Slimi of 1515-20 includes a drawing of one, apparently being used as a flowerpot (Atasoy and Raby, op.cit., p.47). Few tankard forms with the fish-scale design are known although another tankard with tulips separating the colour fields sold Sotheby’s London, 24 April 2013, lot 243.