Tondino with spirals

This plate produced in Iznik demonstrates the existence of cultural exchanges between Ottoman Turkey and Veneto in the sixteenth century resulting through diplomatic and commercial contacts.

The form of the piece, an Italian tondino, was introduced in Italian majolica from the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is characterised by a semicircular cavetto and a wide rim. Its appearance in Iznik dates back to between 1525-1530, together with other Italian forms, such as, the ewer with pinched spout[1].

It is, however, in all other respects, an Ottoman ceramic. The great reputation the Iznik workshops enjoyed from the 1480s rested on the development of fritware. Rich in quartz and lead frit and covered by a layer of quartz-based slip, it produced a very white ceramic. The decoration is painted under a transparent lead glaze. The frit present in each layer ensures a homogenous piece which is therefore resistant and whose beauty was prized from the sixteenth century beyond the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, particularly in Italy. Italian sources praise the beauty of the production of ‘Levant porcelain’ which probably refers to Iznik ceramics. Thus on 4^th June, 1518 Leonardo Peringer petitioned for the right to produce ‘in this glorious city of Venice…good and excellent porcelain objects such as those from the Levant which are transparent’.

The decoration in blue on a white ground comprises spiralling foliage designs of stems decorated with small rosettes and tiny leaves. Seven such arrangements are set around the rim and a single one on the bottom of the cavetto. The form of the plate lends itself particularly well to the development of this decoration which exploits the harmonious proportions of the piece. The design appears in illuminated manuscripts from the 1520s: it is present in the tughra (imperial monogram) from the beginning of the reign of the sultan Süleyman (r. 1520-1566); it was also employed in metalwork from the beginning of the sixteenth century[2]. A fragment of a water bottle from 1529[3] indicates that it appeared in ceramics from the 1520s-1530s, inspired by the work of the chancellery calligraphers. The name of this design has changed in recent decades. The term ‘Golden Horn style’ used originally[4]t has been superseded by ‘tughra style’, referring to the imperial monograms embellished with blue vegetal foliage[5]. The ‘tughra’associated with a deep blue pigment enables us to date this piece to the 1530s; examples from the 1540s contain an ashy green colour[6].

There are several similar examples of tondini with tughra[7] design, which appears to indicate that a veritable production line existed in the workshops of Iznik from the first half of the sixteenth century. Numerous pieces of this type arrived in Italy, and if the Italians had not commissioned them, they clearly prized them highly.

Certain similarities with the tughra style are apparent in the Venetian productions alla porcellana of the 1540s[8], which indicates a very rapid transmission of the Turkish pieces to Italy. A precise imitation was made in Liguria in the second half of the sixteenth century. This style is often apparent on albarelli[9], apothecary vases created in the tenth - eleventh centuries in Central Asia and in Iran, whose form was disseminated throughout the Islamic world and thereafter introduced into Italy via Syria, in the fourteenth century. There are visible differences in the interconnecting foliage design of the Italian pieces where the form is not so clearly emphasised as in the Ottoman productions.

[2] Ewer with lid, silver and partially gilt, beginning C16th, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. M.21-1987.

[3] The object is kept in London, British Museum, inv. G. 1983.118.

[4] The Golden Horn is a strip of sea beside Istanbul, which leads into the Bosphorus. Imperfect pieces (wasters) have been discovered there. It seems, however, that these objects cannot be attributed to production in Istanbul, since similar fragments of such pieces have been found at Iznik and even Kütahya.

[5] Letter from Süleyman the Magnificent to the King of France, François I, Istanbul, 6th April, 1536, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, inv. Ms. Or. Suppl. turc 822.

[6] Concave dish without rim, 1540-1550, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 41.45.

[7] For other examples, see the tondino held at the AshmoleanMuseum , Oxford (1535-1545, inv. EAX.3268) or the tondino of the Keir Collection of Ham (1535-1545).

[8] The majolica plate decorated with vegetal scrolls, attributed to Maestro Lodovico (active in Venice in the 1540s and 1550s), kept in the Fioritura Collection in Berlin, 1540-1550, displays a floral design which, in its finesse and certain details, such as, small leaves in the form of commas, possibly indicates that the potter-painter was familiar with pieces of the Iznik tughra style. 

[9] Albarello in majolica from Liguria, possibly Genoa, c. 1575, Oxford, collection Oliver Impey.