Dish with Pomegranate Decoration

The decoration of this wonderful three-coloured plate from the time of Suleiman the Great (1520-1566) is dominated by oversized, stylized pomegranates, arranged among a bouquet of slender curving stems all springing from the same point and bearing blue pinnate blossoms. Five of the pomegranates with their scale-like pattern lie about the sixth in the centre, in a partly symmetrical and partly asymmetrical relationship to each other. The rim is decorated with an undulating leafy stem with twelve small rosettes, between which are set an equal number of blue cloud-band motifs. The cloud-band motif came to the Islamic world from Chinese art, and enjoyed great popularity under the Ottomans. Stylized in a variety of ways, the pomegranate played an important role, in textile art particularly, during the Ottoman period, and was then adopted by European silk-weavers, especially in Italy. In Ottoman ceramics it makes its appearance only in the mid-sixteenth century. It is around this time that the period of three-coloured fine ceramics comes to an end at Iznik, where the workshops working for the sultan's court, where this piece originated, modified and extended their palette of colours, with red bole coming to have an important role. Before its acquisition by the Museum of Islamic Art in 1992 this dish had only once before been seen in public, at the great exhibition of Masterpieces of Islamic Art held in Munich in 1910. Bought at auction in Cologne in 1898, it is an example of a work that, after many years in private ownership, finally finds its way into a museum.