Dish, fritware, painted under the glaze in blue and turquoise with a scene of ships at sea, Iznik (Türkiye), 1535-45.

Flat dish with a narrow, flat rim, probably based on a silver prototype (compare V&A: 374-1897, of tinned copper, with which it shares the oblique chain pattern along the rim). The decoration, painted under the glaze in cobalt blue and turquoise, shows a pattern developed from a maritime scene, re-arranged to fill the circular space: a three-masted, lateen-rigged sailing ship, probably based on a depiction of a carrack, is surrounded by 22 smaller lateen-rigged boats of different sizes. The sails are painted as blue and turquoise stripes, probably reflecting their composition from lengths of sailcloth sewn together side to side. Spare spaces within the pattern are filled in with blue dots in ones, twos and threes. The outer walls are decorated with meandering floral scrolls, and there are two sets of double circles drawn on the base. The low foot is unglazed, and a patch bare of glaze in the centre of the base is probably a spur mark.

Ships were a popular motif in the decoration of Turkish ceramics made in Iznik. The earliest instance appears in the design on a dish from the 1530s, but is more frequent on objects made in the second half of the 16th century. The ships are typically vessels rigged with triangular shaped sails, known as a 'lateen-rigged' or 'latin-rigged', a reference to their popularity in the Mediterranean, but were also the standard type used by Arab traders in the Indian Ocean.The striped design of the sales may suggest the stitched panels of the original sail cloth.

The shape of this flat dish or tray with its narrow flattened rim is copied from metalwork, a form which seems to have originated in 15th century Turkoman Anatolia and was usually made of Finned copper.

713-1902