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 white-glazed bowl has incised decoration in the centre consisting of two flowers and a lotus branch and lotus
sprigs around the inside rim. The outside of the bowl was originally plain. On the base is a blue inscription written
in underglaze reading ‘made in the Hongzhi period of the great Ming dynasty’ (‘da Ming Hongzhi nian zao’). There is an identical bowl without the later addition of encrusted jewels in the Topkapi Saray collection. The later Ottoman decoration on the outer surface of the bowl is one of the most outstanding examples of Ottoman palace jewellery work. Inlaid gold wire forms a band of arches around the rim and a lattice of lozenges around the body. Inside each arch is a ruby set in a large, tulip-shaped gold mount, and in the lozenges below are four rows of rubies in rose-shaped gold mounts. The tulip and rose mounts are made of three and two layers of gold sheet respectively, giving depth to the design. The exquisite craftsmanship is unique among the jewelled porcelain in the Topkapi Saray collection.
Jewelled decoration applied by palace craftsmen to plain white porcelain created a striking effect, whereas the
designs of blue and white or polychrome porcelain detracted from the impact of the jewellery work. In some cases, such as a blue and white Chinese porcelain writing box, also in the Topkapi Saray Museum, an attempt was made to match the jewellery work to the original design on the porcelain. In his Surname (Book of Festivities) of 1720, illustrated by Levni Abdülcelil Çelebi, a famous illuminator who worked in the imperial court of Sultan Ahmed III (r.1703—30), the poet Seyyid Hüseyin Vehbi, who was active in the imperial court in the first half of the eighteenth century, gives the following description of a jewelled bowl: ‘A Chinese bowl adorned with precious stones, the glitter of the red rubies reflecting upon it making it appear like crimson melting in water.’
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.
