An Ottoman repousse silver Bowl Balkans, circa 1550
£5,000 - £7,000
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Balkans, circa 1550
Balkans, circa 1550
11.2 cm. diam.; weight 82g
Footnotes
This silver bowl belongs to a known group produced in the Balkans under Ottoman rule. The Balkan countries were the main source of silver within the Ottoman Empire. Serbia's richest mine, Novo Brdo, fell to the Turks in 1455 and in 1463 Sultan Mehmet II (The Conqueror) captured Bosnia and its biggest mine, Srebenica. This marks the point at which Ottoman and Balkan styles start to mix.
In terms of overall composition, parallels can be drawn with a group of bowls attributed to the 16th Century inthe Hungarian National Museum, Budapest, excavated in the southern part of Hungary, near the Serbian border (Suleyman the Magnificent and His Age, Exhibition Catalogue, Budapest, 7th September 1994 - 8th January 1995, nos. 60-74); comparison can be drawn with a group of bowls published in honour of Geza Feher (Geza Feher Jr, "Macaristan' daki Turk Kuyumculuk yadigarlari, Balkanlardarki Kyumculuga Turk Tesiri", Trans. Dr Hamit Z. Kosay, in Turk Etnografya Dergisi, 1964-65, no. 50. For a comprehensive discussion of the subject and examples, see the seminal paper on the subject by Marian Wenzel, "Early Ottoman Silver and Iznik Pottery Design" in Apollo, September 1989, pp. 159-65.