Page 159 - ART OF THE ISLAMIC AND INDIAN WORLDS Carpets, Ceramics Objects, Christie's London Oct..27, 2022

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AN OTTOMAN SILK AND METAL THREAD AN OTTOMAN BRASS CANDLESTICK
SERASER PANEL TURKEY, CIRCA 1500
OTTOMAN TURKEY, 18TH CENTURY The waisted cylindrical body with flaring skirt
Gold and silver thread on a silk satin ground, engraved with interlaced foliate arabesques, with
decorated with a large central stylised flower tall ribbed neck with two bosses, with the lower
within an ogival lattice joined by a crown part engraved with continuous knotted design, top
intersecting another ogival lattice with rosettes of neck a later addition
and issuing stylised tulips, comprising several 14æin. (37qcm.) high
fragments couched to a light grey cotton backing
£15,000-20,000 US$18,000-23,000
42¿ x 26qin. (107 x 67cm.)
€18,000-23,000
£7,000-10,000 US$8,100-11,000
€8,000-11,000 This candlestick belongs to a rare group of early
Ottoman metalwork which is dateable to the late
This sumptuous fragment was created using 15 century (Esin Atil et al., Islamic Metalwork in
th
the seraser technique and would have originally the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1985,
been part of a kaftan or robes of honour, likely p.192). Within this group there are a number of
have been given as gifts to courtiers and foreign candlesticks of similar size and form, including
ambassadors. Used in the Ottoman Empire to some with tulip-shaped sockets, but which
produce silver- or gold-coloured silk fabrics by are undecorated. This candlestick belongs to a
wrapping white or yellow silk yarns with very thin sub-set of this rare group which has chiselled
strips of silver or gold foil, the seraser technique decoration. The combination of palmettes and
was practiced by a relatively limited number of arabesques on our candlestick reflect the visual
weavers. The earliest surviving examples show vocabulary of the ceramics and architecture from
small-scale designs adorning narrow stripes the period of Sultan Bayezid II (r.1481-1512) which
(see examples in the Metropolitan Museum of exhibit the ‘Baba Nakkash’ style prevalent in the
Art, inv. nos. 15.125.7 and 2003.519). By the mid- royal workshops of that time. This decorative
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the scale of scheme is found on other similarly dated Ottoman
the designs had grown even larger, but the quality wares, such as a fine tombak flask (matara) which
of the fabric had started to decline. The periodic was sold in these Rooms on 2 May 2019, lot 159.
enforcement of legal restrictions on the use of Examples of similarly decorated candlesticks can
gold and silver in luxury fabrics had an undue be found in the Freer Gallery of Art (op.cit., p.191,
impact on seraserproduction and ultimately cat. 27) and in the Victoria & Albert Museum
led to its decline (Nurhan Atasoy and Walter B. (inv.91.1.586; published in Yanni Petsopoulos (ed.),
Denny, Louise W. Mackie and Hülya Tezcan, Ipek. Tulips, Arabesques and Turbans. Decorative Arts
The Crescent and the Rose. Imperial Ottoman from the Ottoman Empire, London, 1982, p.38). A
Velvets, London, pp. 220–22, 260–63). The most closely related candlestick recently sold in these
remarkable surviving Ottoman seraserfabric, Rooms, 28 October 2021, lot 87.
with designs depicting Christ Enthroned, was
sent from Istanbul as a gift to a sixteenth-century
Orthodox Metropolitan of Moscow (Atasoy et
al., op. cit., pp. 48-49, pl. 10). A fragment of a 16 th
century kaftan woven in gold using the seraser
technique was sold in these Rooms, 26 April
2012, lot 235.

156 In addition to the hammer price, a Buyer’s Premium (plus VAT) is payable. Other taxes and/or an Artist Resale Royalty 1577
15
fee are also payable if the lot has a tax or λ symbol. Check Section D of the Conditions of Sale at the back of this catalogue.