An Early Iznik Blue And White Pottery Dish. Ottoman Turkey, circa 1530. Photo Christie's Ltd 2012

With cusped sloping rim on short foot, the white ground painted in cobalt-blue and turquoise with a central roundel containing bunches of grapes issuing from a vine with scalloped leaves and scrolling tendrils, the cavetto with repeating floral sprays, the rim with stylised wave and rock design, the exterior with similar floral sprays, repaired breaks; 13¾in. (35cm.) diam. Estimate £60,000 - £80,000

Provenance: Formerly European private collection, assembled 1945-78 

Notes: From the late 1520s Iznik potters began to imitate Chinese porcelains. Those copied were generally of the Yuan and early Ming dynasties of the 14th and 15th centuries, examples of which found their way in great quantities into the Islamic world. Of all the Chinese prototypes that existed in the Topkapi Palace collections and were copied by the potters at Iznik, it was the grape design that proved the most popular. 

Atasoy and Raby, in a long discussion on the group, write that the potters of Iznik were faithful to the aesthetic of their Chinese forerunners but indifferent to their 'niceties' as is evidenced by their irregular treatment of the design which was allowed more freedom of interpretation than the original (Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby, Iznik, The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey , London, 1989, pp.121-124).

Perhaps the most notable aspect of this freedom is that the borders of these grape design dishes tend not to be copied from the standard Ming wave border but rather imported from the Yuan type. The Yuan wave border quickly became a favourite of the Ottoman potters, one whimsical analysis identifying it as a 'design composed of the cobs, each enveloped in a leaf, of Indian corn' (W. Lawrence, 'Turkish Potter' in Burlington Fine Arts Club. Catalogue of a collection of old embroideries of the Greek Islands and Turkey, London, 1914, pp. 53-60 quoted in Atasoy and Raby, op.cit, p.121). Later wave and rock borders became heavily stylised but the present dish is one of the earlier examples which imitate the Yuan examples more faithfully with white crested breaking waves drawn with soft washes and delicate strokes.

Like a similar dish in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the points of the cusped rim of this example were not designed to correspond in spacing with the floral sprays of the cavetto, the grapes have dark blue central points, the vines are delinated with linear veins and the grape stems have small suckers sprinking off the vine - a feature not found on later examples. That dish was dated to the second quarter of the 16th century (no. 66.4.10, Esin Atil, The Age of Sultan Sleyman the Magnificent, Washington, 1987, no.173, pp.250-51).

This dish shares an unusual feature with a dish dated 1480-1500 which sold in these Rooms, 4 April 2006, lot 101 and another early grape dish which sold 7 April 2011, lot 304. All three have one central pointil mark on the underside from when the dish was in the kiln rather than the more typical three. This is a feature more typical of the Abraham of Kutahya style of Iznik than the later wares and strongly suggests that our dish was produced before the grape design became standardized in the repertoire of the potters of Iznik. 

Christie's. Art of the Islamic and Indian World. 4 October 2012. London, King Street