Jar, Iznik, Turkey, ca. 1480. Fritware, underglaze painted in blue, glazed. Height: 24.5 cm, Diameter: 23.5 cm. Purchased with the assistance of the Bryan Bequest and The Art Fund. Museum number: C.57-1952 © V&A Images.

Globular jar, with short neck curling out at the lip and a near-symmetrical foot. The decoration, painted under the glaze in blue and white, is in the court style developed in the reign of Sultan Mehmed II (ruled 1451-1481); formerly known as the Abraham of Kutahya style in a ceramics context, it was renamed the Baba Nakkash style by Julian Raby by analogy with designs on paper attributed to this man, who seems to have been head of the palace scriptorium in the relevant period. The decoration of the main body of the jar is divided into three horizontal bands. In the wider central register a double scrollwork pattern -- split-palmette scrolls over smaller floral scrolls -- is reserved in a cobalt-blue ground, and the band at the shoulder and above the foot have peony scrolls in blue on white. On the neck and the foot the narrow bands of decoration -- a guilloche motif, a interlace pattern, and a row of complex cresting -- divided by two torus mouldings, left plain white.

Originally in the Kelekian Collection

Bibliographic References: "Making Haste Slowly", Hali vol.24, issue 122 (2002), pp.80-81 (article about the creation of the Middle East Section) 
Raby, Julian & Atasoy, Nurhan, Iznik: The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey (London, 1989). Colour figure 276; pp. 39 (fig. 31), 47, 77, 79. 
The Arts of Islam. An exhibition organized by the Arts Council of Great Britain in association with the World of Islam Festival Trust. Hayward Gallery, 8 April-4 July 1976. Cat.no.405, p.265. 
Lane, Arthur, "Ottoman Pottery of Isnik", Ars Orientalis 2 (1957):pp.45-48, plate 23a 
The Kelekian Collection of Persian and Analogous Potteries 1885-1910 (Paris, 1910), cat.no. 102