Fritware dish, painted in black, blue, light blue, turquoise, moss green, and manganese under a transparent glaze

This dish is of the “Damascus type,” since it was previously believed that ceramics with this distinctive range of colors, including manganese and moss green, came from the Syrian city. The exquisite palette and decoration on this very rare kind of ceramics actually signified a transitional phase in production in Iznik from the period c. 1540-1555, before bole red gained ground.

The dish’s flat rim was influenced by Chinese porcelain, while the central decoration consists of the types of flowers that then became characteristic of Iznik ware, combining large, fleshy plants with more delicate ones in elegant, frequently symmetrical, compositions.