İznik pottery

The tradition & historical record

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. ¹

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 Ottoman Turkish motivation for creating İznik ware was to imitate the prestige and symbolic value of Chinese porcelain, not its specific decorative designs. 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 using a limited palette. Decoration progressed from pure symmetry to subtle rhythms. ¹

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 (or Kütahya, see below) 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 [Kütahya]. In this year 959 [AD 1510]". 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. ¹

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 ('wasters') 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'." ¹

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 (dry cord) 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. ¹

Archaeological excavations in İznik conducted by Oktay Aslanapa in the early 1960s revealed that the town had been an important centre for the production of simple eart… ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Iznik pottery”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

İznik pottery is type of decorated ceramic, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 7 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²