OTTOMAN SYRIA, 16TH CENTURY

Tiles of the same design as that offered here are in museum collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, which has a panel of 11 tiles, acc.no.908 to F.1894 and 894.1897. Other single tiles are in the British Museum (OA.10676), the Louvre, Paris (MAO 311c), the Brooklyn Museum, New York (acc.no.86.227.194), the Sadberk Hanim Museum, Istanbul and the David Collection, Copenhagen (28 / 1962). An example of a tile of the same design to that found here but with the cintamani picked out in cobalt and turquoise-blue with green highlights is in the Potteries Museum, Stoke on Trent (published Arthur Millner, Damascus Tiles, London, 2015, fig.6.91, p.282. It is not known which building tiles of this pattern originally came from - the only substantial group of Ottoman hexagonal tiles still remaining in situ in Damascus are to be found in the prayer hall and courtyard of the Darwishiyya Mosque (1575), but these are not of the same design. Tiles from the same series have recently sold at auction – see Rosebery’s 28 October 2022, lot 85 or Olympia Auctions, 5 June 2024, lot 129.