Dish with Sailing-ship Design

The Ottoman navy played an increasing role in the Mediterranean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it is not surprising that sailing ships became a popular motif in Iznik pottery. Although multiple lateen-rigged ships were the standard on jugs and tankards, on plates the design was normally a single, multimasted ship, more European than Turkish in appearance, sailing on a schematic sea adorned with curious cloudlike shapes.

Credit: Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1966