This is the French edition of the catalogue about the exhibition of the Iznik collection kept at the Renaissance museum of Chateau d'Ecouen.
The National Museum of Renaissance was established in the castle of Ecouen 20 years ago. It presents, among other things, an extraordinary collection of Ottoman ceramics named Iznik.
This set of over 400 pieces was acquired from archaeologist Auguste Salzmann (1824-1872), who himself had acquired it on the occasion of his stay in Rhodes and on the Dodecanese islands between 1857 and 1868.
Because of the geographical origin of this collection, for a long time this ceramic was wrongly called “Persian earthenware from Rhodes”
It actually comes from the town of Iznik, former Nicaea in Asia Minor, where workshops made for the court tiles designed to decorate the great monuments of Muslim art: mosques in Istanbul and Cairo, palaces in Topkapi and Damascus…
This particular technique was special because it didn’t involve earthenware, but siliceous earth slipware.
In the first part of the catalogue, the authors retell how the collection was acquired, with Auguste Salzmann as central point. It helps understand why, for along time, this collection was known as “Persian earthenware from Rhodes” and how it was acquired bu the National Museum of Renaissance in Cluny.
The second part, more technical, offers a general presentation of the quality and conditions of production of the Ottoman ceramic.
The book finally reproduces all the pieces conserved at the museum, through 23 themes: plates with decors resembling the Italian style, plats with decors resembling the Chinese style, plates with representations of animals or people, plates with floral decors…
This presentation emphasises the quality of each piece, the extraordinary variety of styles and the astounding skills of the Ottoman potters between 1530 and the mid-17th century.
