Page 238 - The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent

either in blue on white or with the motifs reserved in white ware, because a group of shards and small vessels with this
against a blue-painted background. design was discovered in 1905 when the foundations of the
This style, characterized by elaborate blossoms with curling post office building were dug in Sirkeci, a district in Istanbul
petals rendered in a painterly manner, was applied to large where the Golden Horn flows into the Sea of Marmara. n This
bowls, mosque lamps, plates, and jars as well as candlesticks, design, employed on the early tugras of Süleyman, appears
ewers, jugs, and pen boxes that follow the angular and artic- on extremely few tiles. 14 It is also found on a number of ves-
ulated shapes of metalwork. In addition, there are series of sels, the most important of which is a broken bottle dated
plates decorated with floral scrolls, bouquets of blossoms, or 1529, now in the British Museum (fig. 20). The ambiguous
three bunches of grapes that copy the themes and composi- inscriptions around the neck and inside the foot ring of this
tions found on Yuan and Ming dynasty wares. In some ex- piece state that it was ordered as an "object" from Kütahya
amples Chinese prototypes were faithfully followed, while in by a bishop named Ter Martiros for the Monastery of the
15
others certain motifs were selected and at times combined Holy Mother of God in Ankara. The British Museum bottle
with indigenous themes. indicates that the spiral scroll was well within the repertoire
Chinese-inspired motifs in blue-and-turquoise ware reveal of the potters by 1530.
a greater freedom of execution, abandoning the rigid designs The most splendid blue-and-turquoise wares are the five
and compact compositions found in the blue-and-white large rectangular tiles on the facade of the Sünnet Odasi,
group. Blue-and-turquoise ware, which includes the same which were probably made in the mid-sixteenth century and
range of vessels and plates, is datable by a few monuments moved to the fourth courtyard of the palace a hundred years
and objects. Tiles with these two colors were used in revet- later. Their decoration shows the perfected saz style with an
ments, as seen in the Mausoleum of Çoban Mustafa Pa§a in exuberant growth of overlapping, intersecting, twisting, and
Gebze. They were also applied to the tightly-wound spiral turning composite hatayis and feathery leaves, recreating the
scrolls seen on objects popularly known as Golden Horn enchanted forests associated with this genre. Drawn with the
assurance of a saz master, possibly by §ahkulu himself, their
designs parallel the magnificent kemhas used in the kaftans
made for §ehzades Mustafa and Bayezid in the 1550s.
These tiles, thought to have been made for one of Siiley-
man's pavilions, contain two different compositions. Four of
them, measuring 127 by 48 centimeters (50 by 18% inches),
16
were pounced from the same cartoon that was reversed in
two panels, creating two pairs of mirror-image compositions.
Each panel represents luxuriant foliage with two fantastic
chilins at the bottom; hidden among the foliage are five birds,
their eyes once set with precious stones (fig. 21). The fifth
panel replaces the chilins with a large double-handled vase
17
from which the flora emerges. These two compositions were
so admired that they were copied a century later and used to
decorate the Bagdad Ko§ku, built in 1639 in the fourth court-
yard of the palace. In contrast to the large single-tile format
used in the mid-sixteenth century, these later versions are
composed of several rectangular pieces.
Saz themes including animals appear to have been used on
hexagonal tiles as well, since there exists a series with a pair
of ducks swimming among the foliage. 18 The same floral
themes were applied to vessels and plates, some of which
represent human figures and animals. Three fragments from a
vessel, thought to have been a tankard, show a princely en-
tertainment scene with two men with turbans and beards, a
wine steward holding a bottle, and several animals and birds,
19
including a cheetah and a parakeet. An equally unusual
blue-and-turquoise piece is a fragment of a plate, its center
decorated with a crane or heron engulfed by saz blossoms
20
and leaves. The impact of album drawings and manuscript
Fig. 20. Blue-and-white fragmentary bottle dated 1529 (London, The British
Museum, G. 1983.16) illustrations also is evident on other examples produced in
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