Page 209 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

and white vessels were manufactured in late fif- small silver-gilt Ottoman drinking bowls of the
teenth-century Egypt, in general these craftsmen late fifteenth century.
could not duplicate the Chinese process. They The most important innovation, however, is the
had no access to the porcelain-stone that produced use of the chinoiserie lotus-scrolls on the flat rim
the characteristic, much admired body of Chinese as well as on the cavetto and on the ground of the
porcelains, and their kilns fired at far too low a center. Julian Raby (Raby and Atasoy 1989, 76-
temperature. The bodies are all silicon-enriched, 81) has traced this motif to drawings in an album,
making early blue and white wares from Muslim F1423, in the Istanbul University Library. This
potteries rather breakable and generally small in material is mostly datable to the reign of Mehmed
size. The characteristic glaze was alkaline, a mix- ii and has been tenuously associated with Baba
ture of soda and lime. Nakkas,, a high Janissary officer whose career con-
In the Ottoman town of Iznik, however, revolu- tinued under Bayazid n.
tionary technologies made it possible to fire kilns Baba Nakkas. served as one of the inspectors of
c
at higher temperatures. Iznik ware was produced the accounts (mu temeds) for the building of Bay-
in an unparalleled range of shapes and in larger azid's mosque in Istanbul. He founded mosques of
sizes than earlier Islamic ceramics. his own as well, the Dizdariye Camii in Istanbul
This impressive dish, which compares in size and one at £atalca in Thrace. Since Imperial
with Chinese Yuan blue and white porcelain decrees issued for him use the sobriquet nakka§,
dishes (cat. 101), may owe its decoration in meaning painter or decorator, it is possible that he
reserve to such a source, but is not markedly could have also been a court painter who adapted
Chinese in shape. The arabesque interlace at the the album drawings to this blue and white vessel.
center is, moreover, adapted from the prints of J.M.R.

103
MOSQUE LAMP

c. 1505
Turkish, Iznik, Ottoman
under glaze-painted fritware
height 28.5 (ny 4)
inscribed: (on the rim) Koran LXI, 13; ya
c
Muhammad; Allah, Muhammad, Ali
references: Merig 1957, 7-76; Unal 1969, 74-111;
London 1976, no. 409; Frankfurt-am-Main 1985,
no. 7, 2; London 1988, no. 130; Raby and Atasoy
19^9, no. 89

The Trustees of the British Museum, London

At the rim of this mosque lamp are three oblong
panels separated by a knotted pseudo-Kufic motif
with stenciled inscriptions in naive naskhr. part

208 CIRCA 1492