A newly discovered Ottoman charger, described as one of the most important pieces of Iznik pottery in private hands, will be offered at Sotheby’s Arts of the Islamic World sale this week, writes Roland Arkell.
The 17in (44cm) shallow dish – produced at the very advent of the art form in the 1480s – is a lost sibling to four similar large dishes made during the reign of Mehmet II (‘the Conqueror’) that were published in Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby’s landmark book Iznik: The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey (1989).