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Author Gönül Öney
Editor Sevinç Gök Gürhan – Kayhan Dörtlük – Remziye Boyraz
Material Type Book
Year Antalya, 2009
ISBN No 9786054018055
Dimensions 230×280 mm
Page 142 p.
Figure 87 ill.
Language Turkisn and English
Translation İnci Türkoğlu – Carol Stevens Yürür
Series Monography Series: 5

Summary

While looking through my notes on Iznik ceramics with ship depictions, I was reminded of the beautiful exhibitions and the chats at the Artisan Gallery of Ertan and Bilge Mestçi in Ankara in 1974 and 1975. Ertan had presented me the first dishes with ship depictions at an exhibition by Sıtkı Olçar and thus I started to bring them into my small collection. I wish I had bought many more! Indeed, I gave most of them away to my dear friends! I wish I had not! Nevertheless, if there had been more dishes with ship depictions decorating the walls of our living room, we would have needed more walls. All through the years when I did research in various museums of the world, from America to Europe, to Africa and Japan, I always kept an eye on the Ottoman pottery with ship depictions. Those years passed by very quickly, and most of the museum directors and curators who had once given me permission to study them are no longer in their offices. Yet, I remember them all with gratitude and thanks. It is a misfortune that our museums do not have Iznik and Kütahya ceramics with ship depictions beside those from Çanakkale. However, a dish at Sadberk Hanım Museum in Istanbul, which is almost a replica of the dish at the Louvre and very interesting examples in the private collection of Mr. Ömer M. Koç narrow this gap to some extent. The examples from Ömer M. Koç Collection are on display, at the time of writing, for the exhibition ‘Dance of Fire: Iznik Tiles and Ceramics in the Sadberk Hanım Museum and Ömer M. Koç Collections’ and presented in the exhibition catalogue prepared meticulously by Hülya Bilgi. I am very pleased to have been able to evaluate them before the publication of my book and would like to express my sincere thanks to Mr. Ömer M. Koç for allowing me to use images of some invaluable pieces from his collection. Following the years at the Faculty of Languages and History–Geography of Ankara University, I spent many more years at Ege University, Izmir, loaded with other publication work and administrative positions in addition to teaching, and thus forgot my dishes with ship depictions. I would like to thank Mr. Kayhan Dörtlük, Director of the Suna & İnan Kıraç Research Institute on Mediterranean Civilizations, and the Suna & İnan Kıraç Foundation for making me remember these dishes and giving the chance to publish this work about them. Probably it would have taken me longer to finish this book if Dr. Sevinç Gök Gürhan had not helped to sort out the files on my computer, which has tricked me a million times while writing my papers since retirement. Embracing her with affection, I am pleased to have taught her, though for a very short time. In addition, thanks go to Hasan Uçar for transferring to digital format my dia-positives accumulated over the years; and to art historian İnci Türkoğlu for her meticulous and careful work and close collaboration on the translation. I hope that you too will enjoy these Ottoman ceramics with ship depictions and their reflections on the present.