Фрагментоване денце глазурованої тарілки

Description

A fragmentary base of a glazed dish. The central medallion shows a flower within a flower: the inner one has six cream petals and a deep-blue dot at its heart, and black radial lines run from the petals as the veins of the outer seven-petalled white flower. Around the central rosette are seven large and seven smaller boteh plant stems on a turquoise ground; the smaller ones point their sharp ends outwards, the larger ones inwards. Each boteh is white with a relief cream centre. Between them and a concentric white ring, on a cobalt-blue ground, are seven trefoils with cream buds. The composition is completed by an outer ring entirely filled with a continuous wavy blue-turquoise stem. The outside, on a low ring foot, is unornamented apart from a fragment of blue drawing on the broken part, but is glazed. In an unpublished article of 1938 V. I. Selinov assigned the vessel to "Sarai ceramics", the products of the Lower Volga centres of the Ulus of Jochi (Selinov 1938, p. 455), but the dish has features linking it to the ceramic production of Iznik: underglaze painting in turquoise and cobalt blue, a light ground and stylised floral ornament. The combination of cobalt blue, turquoise and red is characteristic of classic Iznik ceramics of the second half of the 16th to 17th century. Attributed with the help of Prof. S. O. Biliaieva, Dr. of History, associate professor at the Department of Archaeology of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and Zeynep Meriç, Dr. Sanat Tarihçisi, researcher in Byzantine and Turkish art (ceramics and small objects), Metropolis Excavations. Scientific description by Yaroslav Chentsov.