Click here to buy tickets for this exhibition, or telephone +44 (0)870 8488484.
Click here to buy the Turks catalogue from the Royal Academy’s main website.
This ewer has a pyriform body attached to a curved spout by a cloud-shaped bridge. Vessels of this type imitate ewers used in the Middle East, and began to be produced in China in the fifteenth century. On either side of the body are foliate medallions, one containing two peach branches and the other two loquat branches. The ground is decorated with chrysanthemums, peonies, camellias and roses. Along the handle is a lingzhi (mythological fungus) pattern. Three drilled points on the base were added later as the owner’s mark. There is another ewer identical in form and decoration in the Topkapi Saray collection, and a further two similar examples in the Ardabil collection in the Archaeological Museum, Tehran. Silver gilt mounts on the spout and handle are later Ottoman additions dating to around 1500. Both mounts terminate in dragons’ heads. A silver stud on the handle shows that there was formerly a lid. Empty sockets on the eyes and ears of the dragons would originally have contained precious stones. The ewer is one of the finest and earliest examples of the Ottoman jewelsmith’s art applied to porcelain. Sets of ewers and basins were used by the Ottomans both for religious ablutions and for washing the hands before and after meals. It is thought that small ewers in particular were used for the latter purpose in palaces and private homes before running water became widely available. The large number of ewer and basin sets made of gold, silver, gold-plated copper and porcelain in theTopkapi collection shows how widespread this custom was. A sixteenth-century miniature in a copy of the Siyer-i Nebj (The Life of the Prophet [Muhammad]) composed by Ottoman court artists portrays the Prophet Muhammad performing his ablutions with a ewer and basin.
Ayse Erdogdu
• Click here to buy tickets for this exhibition, or telephone +44 (0)870 8488484.
• Click here to buy the Turks catalogue from the Royal Academy’s main website.
