Each of rectangular form painted with swaying tulips and roses amidst a scrolling tendril of saz leaves, mounted'.

Provenance: By repute, private French collection by 1974.

Note: Despite the development of a broader polychrome palette in Ottoman Turkey, the taste for blue-and-white pottery could not be displaced (Atasoy and Raby, 1989, p.237). The elegant, restricted palette of cobalt-blue had developed from fifteenth to sixteenth century Yuan and Ming types (ibid.), yet the floral motifs employed on these tiles form part of the Ottoman decorative repertoire prevalent in Iznik pottery by the 1560s. The use of undulating saz leaves interspersed with stylised tulips in contrasting directions animates the tile such that there is no need for additional colour (ibid., p.239). The rectangular shape of the tiles would suggest that they were made for a border panel. A similar border panel with comparable decoration is found above a doorway in the sultan's lodge of the Selimiye Mosque, Edirne, of 1569-75 (Carswell, 1998, p.79, fig.52).

Two closely comparable tiles from the same group were sold at Sotheby's, London, 6 April 2011, lot 431.

Christie's. Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets, London, 2 May 2019