Iznik pottery
Iznik pottery, or Iznik ware, named after the town of İznik in Anatolia where it was made, is a decorated ceramic that was produced from the last quarter of the 15th century until the end of the 17th century. The Ottoman Turkish motivation for creating İznik ware was to imitate the prestige and symbolic value of Chinese porcelain, not its specific decorative designs. While their conceptual origin lies in Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, their decorative design is a distinct Ottoman adaptation of the International Timurid style. This adaptation is marked by a transformation from the prototype's languid quality to a more forceful and contained design, distinguished by its intensity and three-dimensional feel. Technologically, these wares are unique, differing from the methods used for contemporary Iranian pottery and Ottoman architectural tilework. This distinct manufacturing process is thought to be an invention of Anatolian potters.
İznik was an established centre for the production of simple earthenware pottery with an underglaze decoration when, in the last quarter of the 15th century, craftsmen in the town began to manufacture high quality pottery with a fritware body painted with cobalt blue under a colourless transparent lead glaze. The change was almost certainly a result of active intervention and patronage by the recently established Ottoman court in Istanbul who greatly valued Chinese blue-and-white porcelain.
During the 16th century the decoration of the pottery gradually changed in style, becoming looser and more flowing. Additional colours were introduced. Initially turquoise was combined with the dark shade of cobalt blue and then the shades of piney green and pale purple were added. From the middle of the century the potters in Iznik produced large quantities of underglazed tiles to decorate the imperial buildings designed by the architect Mimar Sinan. Associated with the production of tiles was the introduction of a very characteristic bole red to replace the purple and a bright emerald green to replace the sage green. From the last decade of the century there was a marked deterioration in quality and although production continued during the 17th century the designs were poor. The last important building to be decorated with tiles from Iznik was the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul that was completed in 1616.
The ceramic collection of the Topkapı Palace includes over ten thousand pieces of Chinese porcelain but almost no Iznik pottery. Most of the surviving Iznik vessels are in museums outside Turkey, but examples of the city's tile production exist in numerous cities throughout Turkey, such as Istanbul, Bursa, Edirne and Adana. In Istanbul examples of Iznik tiling can be seen in mosques, tombs, libraries, and palace buildings, such as the Rüstem Pasha Mosque, the Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque, the tomb of Selim II in the Hagia Sophia complex, and certain buildings of the Topkapı Palace complex such as the Circumcision room and the Baghdad Kiosk.
Overview: role of Chinese porcelain
In earlier periods, Chinese craftspeople used blue-and-white porcelain to replicate the styles of Islamic pottery and metal crafts. Chinese potters in the eighth century duplicated designs like lotus scrolls and motifs from Persian silverwork.Following the establishment of the Ottoman Empire in the early 14th century, Iznik pottery initially followed Seljuk Empire antecedents.
After this initial period, Iznik vessels were inspired by Chinese porcelain, which was highly prized by the Ottoman sultans. As the potters were unable to make porcelain, the vessels produced were fritware, a low-fired body comprising mainly silica and glass.
The originality of the potters was such that their use of Chinese originals has been described as adaptation rather than imitation. Chinese ceramics had long been admired, collected and emulated in the Islamic world. This was especially so in the Ottoman court and the Safavid court in Persia which had important collections of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. Such Chinese porcelains influenced the style of Safavid pottery and had a strong impact on the development of Iznik ware. By the mid-16th century, Iznik had its own vocabulary of Turkish floral and abstract motifs in tight designs making use of a limited palette. Decoration progressed from pure symmetry to subtle rhythms.
Provenance
From the second half of the 19th century until the 1930s European collectors were confused by the different styles of Iznik pottery and assumed that they originated from different pottery producing centres. Although it is now believed that all the pottery was produced in İznik the earlier names associated with the different styles are still often used. In the 19th century until the 1860s all Islamic pottery was normally known as 'Persian' ware. However, between 1865 and 1872 the Musée de Cluny in Paris acquired a collection of polychrome fritware pottery with a design that included a bright 'sealing-wax red'. As all the items in the collection had been obtained on the island of Rhodes it was assumed, erroneously, that the pottery had been manufactured on the island and the term 'Rhodian' ware was adopted for this style. European collectors also purchased a number of pieces decorated in blue, turquoise, sage green and pale purple which were believed to originate from the town of Damascus in Syria and became known as 'Damascus' ware. Blue and white fritware pottery became known as 'Abraham of Kutahia ware' as the decoration was similar to that on a small ewer that once formed part of the collection of Frederick Du Cane Godman and is now in the British Museum. The ewer has an inscription in Armenian script under the glaze on its base stating that the vessel was "in commemoration of Abraham, servant of God, of K'ot'ay . In this year 959 ". In 1905–1907, during the construction of a new post office in the Sirkeci district of Istanbul near the shore of the Golden Horn, pottery fragments were unearthed that were decorated with spiral designs on a white background. As a result, pottery with similar spiral patterns became known as 'Golden Horn ware'.It was not until the 1930s that art historians fully realised that the different styles of pottery were probably all produced in Iznik. In 1957 Arthur Lane, keeper of ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum, published an influential article in which he reviewed the history of pottery production in the region and proposed a series of dates. He suggested that 'Abraham of Kütahya' ware was produced from 1490 until around 1525, 'Damascus' and 'Golden Horn ware' were produced from 1525 until 1555 and 'Rhodian' ware from around 1555 until the demise of the Iznik pottery industry at the beginning of the 18th century. This chronology has been generally accepted.
İznik and Kütahya
The 'Abraham of Kutahia' ewer of 1510 is not the only vessel with a possible Kütahya origin. A damaged water bottle decorated in the 'Golden Horn' style has two underglaze inscriptions in Armenian script; one, dated 1529, refers to the commissioner of the vessel, Bishop Ter Martiros, the other refers to the vessel as being sent as "an object of K'ot'ays" for a monastery. Lane argued that it was unlikely that either the 'Abraham of Kutahia' ewer or the water bottle had been made in Kütahya. However, subsequent archaeological excavations in Kütahya have unearthed fragments of pots in the blue and white Iznik style that had been damaged during manufacture providing evidence that fritware pottery was produced in the town. The designs, materials and manufacturing technique appear to have been similar to that used in İznik. Kütahya is further from Istanbul with less easy access to the capital and was probably only a small pottery producing centre in the 16th century. Nevertheless, it is likely that some of the pottery that is currently labelled as 'Iznik' was manufactured in Kütahya. The art historian Julian Raby has written: "For the moment we have no choice but to call all Ottoman glazed pottery of the 16th and 17th centuries by the generic label 'Iznik', and to hope that in time we can learn to recognise the diagnostic features of contemporary 'Kütahya ware'."Imperial workshops in Istanbul
During the first half of the 16th century underglaze painted blue-and-white ceramics were also produced in Istanbul. A surviving account book for 1526 that records wages paid to craftsmen employed by the Ottoman court, lists a tilemaker from Tabriz with ten assistants. The tilemaker was probably one of the craftsmen brought to Istanbul after Selim I had temporary captured Tabriz in 1514. The tile workshops were located in the Tekfur Sarayı neighbourhood of the city near the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. The craftsmen are believed to have been responsible for all the tiles on the imperial buildings until the construction of the Süleymaniye Mosque in the 1550s. Most of the tiles were decorated with coloured glazes using the cuerda seca technique, but in a few cases the tiles were underglaze painted in cobalt blue and turquoise. The cuerda seca technique created a new way to glaze these tiles while not requiring the intense labor previous techniques had. These underglaze tiles were used on the revetments of the facade of the Holy Mantle Pavilion in the grounds of the Topkapı Palace and within the mausoleum of Çoban Mustafa Pasha in Gebze. The most striking examples are five extremely large rectangular tiles, in length, that form part of the façade of the Circumcision Room of the Topkapı Palace. Although the building dates from 1641, the tiles are believed to come from an earlier structure on the same site that was erected in 1527–1528. These large tiles are decorated with very elaborate designs that suggests the close involvement of the court designers.Although there are no surviving records detailing the output of the imperial workshops, it is likely that the potters manufacturing the blue-and-white underglaze painted tiles also made other items for the court. The art historian Gülru Necipoğlu has suggested that an unusual gilded mosque lamp and a decorative ball that come from the Yavuz Selim Mosque should be attributed to the imperial workshop. The lamp and ball have underglaze inscriptional bands in cobalt blue but the mosque itself is decorated only with cuerda seca tiles. The number of tilemakers employed by the imperial workshops dwindled so that by 1566 only three remained. With the construction of the Süleymaniye Mosque, Iznik became a major center for the manufacture of underglaze tiles.