{"id":549,"date":"2017-07-18T15:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-07-18T14:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.courtauld.ac.uk\/illuminating-objects\/?page_id=549"},"modified":"2020-08-13T12:09:33","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T11:09:33","slug":"iznik-dish","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.courtauld.ac.uk\/illuminating-objects\/illuminating-objects-home\/iznik-dish\/","title":{"rendered":"Iznik Dish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Floral motifs can adorn anything from towering cultural monuments to your grandmother’s pin cushion. And so, we might overlook the significance of the humble bloom. Laila El-Sayed, however, shows us the powerful cultural roots of a floral dish from The Courtauld Gallery. Produced between 1560\u201365 in the Ottoman city of Iznik (North-West Anatolia), the dish is ripe for interpretations inspired by 16th<\/sup>-century lyrical poetry, travel narratives and mystical meditations. Read on to learn about its remarkably symmetrical arrangement of carnations and blossoms, tulips and hyacinths.<\/p>\n

Work on this project was carried out during Laila’s Masters in History at the University of Kent in Canterbury.<\/p>\n\n[aesop_parallax height=”1800″ img=”https:\/\/sites.courtauld.ac.uk\/illuminating-objects\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/07\/01-1.jpg” parallaxbg=”fixed” caption=”Anonymous maker, Iznik dish, 1560\u201365, Fritware, 29.6 cm, \u00a9 The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London, O.1966.GP.138″ captionposition=”bottom-left” lightbox=”off” floater=”off” floaterposition=”left” floaterdirection=”none” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n

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Interpreting Iznik floral motifs<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This beautifully ornate dish was bequeathed to The Courtauld Gallery in 1966. The floral motifs of the object typify the Kara Memi floral style, named after the chief painter (fl.1545-66) of S\u00fcleyman the Magnificent\u2019s (1494\u20131566) court. This floral style was an artistic move towards realism in depicting garden flowers. It is also often called the \u2018Quatre Fleurs\u2019 style because it used four principal flowers: the tulip, carnation, rose and hyacinth.<\/p>\n

The dish has many references that make it not only an object of great beauty but also a complex cultural document. For the scholars Atasoy and Raby: \u2018the popularity of the [Kara Memi floral] style might be attributed to symbolism\u2019.[1]<\/sup><\/p>\n

The floral patterns on The Courtauld Iznik dish could give rise to stereotypes about the merely decorative quality of Islamic floral art. Because of the debate within Islam regarding the status of figurative imagery, and the view of some that Islam should be intolerant of figurative representation, the merely decorative use of flowers has been argued for.<\/p>\n

However, this conception is misleading when employed to interpret 16th<\/sup>-century Ottoman art.[2]\u00a0<\/sup>The floral motifs were used on Ottoman prayer books, Qur\u2019an frontispieces, tobacco pouches, kaftans, imperial tents, and decorative mattress covers. The presence of flowers on all kinds of objects could suggest that floral motifs transcended their merely decorative function to reflect spiritual, cultural and literary connotations.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ottoman Gardens Through European Eyes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The floral genre of Iznik ceramics fascinated 16th<\/sup>-century European travellers. Their comments on the meaning of flowers and gardens in Ottoman culture can help us to understand why Iznik artisans favoured floral motifs.<\/p>\n

To many European travellers, Ottoman floriculture was a newsworthy novelty. Pierre Belon du Mans (1517\u201364), a herbalist who travelled in quest of plants throughout the Ottoman empire between 1546\u201349 in the entourage of the French ambassador to S\u00fcleyman the Magnificent, noted that:<\/p>\n

There are no people who so much delight in beautiful flowers as the Turks, when they find a beautiful wallflower or some other graceful flower, even though it has no smell they do not prize it the less. We like to have bunches of different kinds of scented flowers mixed together, but the Turks care only for sight rather than smell, and like to have only one flower at a time. Even if they may have several different kinds of flowers it is their custom to wear only a single flower in the folds of their turban. Artisans commonly have several flowers of different colours in a jar of water in front of them, to keep them fresh in their beauty. And so the Turks think as much of their gardens as we do, and go to great trouble to get exotic trees, particularly those that have beautiful flowers, and grudge no money for the purpose.<\/em>[3]<\/sup><\/p>\n

Belon communicated the Ottomans\u2019 delicate tastes and passion for ‘beautiful flowers [which] are held in high esteem’. Istanbul in the 16th<\/sup> century, according to Belon, was an international marketplace for knowledgeable horticulturists, where ‘so many foreigners who come to Constantinople in ships from other countries bring with them roots of plants which have beautiful flowers and sell them in the markets, and from all the things that they bring they make money’.<\/p>\n

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Members of the guild of florists carrying vases of flowers at the festivities for the circumcision of Prince Mehmed (1566\u20131603), son of Sultan Murad III in the late 16th century.
\nSurname-\u00ec Humay\u00fcn [The book of Imperial festivities], written by famous court annalist Seyyid Lokman and Illustrated by Nakka\u015f Osman, 1582.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ottoman floriculture received further attention from Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522\u201392), a Flemish diplomat who resided in the Ottoman lands from 1555\u201362).[4]<\/sup><\/p>\n

On his journey from Adrianople to Constantinople, de Busbecq wrote in his letters, ‘we everywhere came across quantities of flowers\u2014narcissi, hyacinths and tulipans, as the Turks call them. We were surprised to find them flowering in mid-winter, scarcely a favourable season.’ Busbecq also observed that the Ottoman ‘do not allow rose-leaves to lie on the ground, because they think that the rose sprang from the sweat of Mahomet, just as the ancients believed that it came from the blood of venus’.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Quatre Fleurs<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Within 16th-<\/sup>century Ottoman culture, gardens were both spiritual and intellectual spaces. Gardens were places for the religious scholars (meclis-i ulema<\/em>) to study and contemplate the marvels of Allah the Creator. Flowers evoked Qur\u2019anic descriptions of Paradise and the garden of Eden.[5] <\/sup>Also, gardens were spaces for cultured companionship (sohbet<\/em>) between courtiers and intellectuals.[6]\u00a0<\/sup><\/p>\n