John Carswell: Iznik Pottery

Description

Their designs combine purely Turkish motifs with elements ingeniously transposed from imported Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. Over time a more subtle painterly style and complex palette were developed, culminating in the brilliant combination of cobalt blue, turquoise, olive green, magenta, and red that became the internationally recognized Iznik hallmark. Iznik ceramics were highly prized far beyond the Ottoman Empire, and although the factories had passed their peak by the late seventeenth century, their influence lived on through nineteenth-century European imitations by such potters as William de Morgan and Cantagalli.