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Lot 69W

A Kutahya underglaze-painted pottery Tile Panel by Azim Çini
Turkey, circa 1950

6 October 2015, 14:00 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £2,750 inc. premium

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A Kutahya underglaze-painted pottery Tile Panel by Azim Çini
Turkey, circa 1950

rectangular, decorated in polychrome with Iznik style decoration consisting of a repeat design of interlocking cartouches formed from undulating split palmettes filled with sprays of tulips, saz leaves, lotus flowers and other floral and foliate motifs, the border with alternating flowerheads and saz leaves, some tiles inscribed 'AZIM' verso
341 x 160 cm.

Footnotes

Provenance
European private collection.
Irfan Kipman.

Irfan Kipman (1919-88) was born in Istanbul in 1919 to a wealthy mercantile family. He studied languages, reputedly speaking nine fluently. He studied journalism, and composed music, publishing tangos in the 1940s-50s. He was an accomplished accordion player and toured the USA with a band of fellow Turkish musicians. He studied and collected both antique and contemporary Turkish ceramics, and was considered
a connoisseur in this field. In the late 1940 Irfan was offered a position with The Voice of America, the US radio station, where he directed and hosted his own radio
program from Turkey. In the 1950s, he and his wife Irma moved to Washington D.C., where he worked both as a journalist and translator, whilst touring as a musician. In 1950 he did a very well known and documented world tour on his Harley Davidson motorcycle. He regularly travelled back and forth between the U.S.A. and Turkey where he regularly purchased large quantities of tiles and tile mural panels which he took back to the US to decorate his home and those of his Turkish friends. Due to the huge quantity of tiles that he had acquired in Turkey, Irfan purchased a surplus naval vessel from the US Navy (c. 1949), which he personally sailed to the US loaded with crates of tiles. Irfan retired to Malaga in Spain in the 1960s, where he lived until his death in 1988.

Additional information