drawn just as we find them on nakkaÎhane-designed Iznik tiles, and echoes the way the çintamani stripes are executed on the embroidered kaftan in the Topkapı (14). Similarly drawn paired clouds or stripes, but with a single ball between, appear in the border of another of our group ( I ). The fields of both these embroideries are relatively naïve renditions of sophisticated designs, yet their borders show close adherence to a classical model. What are we to make of this mixture of high style and provincial interpretation, of the multiple sources of inspiration, and of the other clear differences between our new group and traditional Ottoman embroideries? Under what conditions could they have been made? First, we must assume that they were made in an area geographically removed from the capital. Their distinctive materials and needlework technique clearly set them apart from surviving metropolitan examples. Second, there had to have been local patronage to help with the costs and logistics of providing models for the designs, as well as someone who could guarantee an appreciative market. Third, this patronage had to be in some important commercial outpost with ready trade access to the artistic centres of the Ottoman Empire, whether in Anatolia or the provinces. The careful articulation of the cloudbands and of the ‘ball and cloud’ borders, as discussed above, suggests some access to models or drawings, perhaps even to pounces – perforated patterns used to replicate designs. For all the scholarly research in Ottoman art in recent decades, there is still much that we do not know about the mechanisms for transfer and adaptation of nakkaÎhane designs, although it is clear that for many of the Ottoman arts the formal designs were more an inspiration than a determinant. However the artisan accessed the designs, it was he or she who had to

VII .Facing page, below: Cloudband, Ottoman embroidered panel. Silk on silk,0.86m (2'10") square.Private collection

9. Facing page, above: Ottoman velvet portfolio embroidered with silk and gold and silver wire, Turkey, second half 16th century. Topkapı Saray Museum, Istanbul, 31/168. After Atıl 1987, pl.138

VIII .Right: Trefoils,Ottoman embroidered panel. Silk on silk, o.58 x 0.86m (1'11" x 2'10"). Private collection

10. Below right: pre-Ottoman beylik cut-stone trefoil border, Ilyas Bey Mosque, Balat (Miletus), early 15th century. A row of reciprocal trefoils as a frieze or border is ubiquit0us in Turanian arts over the centuries, from Seljuk architecture to Ottoman velvets to 19th century village rugs

OTTOMAN EMBROIDERY

StephenPetegorsky

adapt them to the medium in which he or she was working. 18

So, while local patronage must have been obtained for our embroideries, it is likely that the artistic conditions may have been less regulated and structured in a provincial centre than in the capital. The remove from the metropolis meant a distance from both its resources and its restrictions. The designers showed themselves much more open to adopting any and all kinds of fashionable designs they could glean from any media. They

nakkaÎhane. Examples of traditional linen ground embroideries closely following court style appear in Erber, op.cit., nos. S 8/1 and S 8/2, and in Taylor, op.cit. p.85. 11| See, for example, Petsopoulos, op.cit. pl.139. 12| Pile rugs also frequently borrow

drawloom textile patterns. See Gerard Paquin, ‘Silk and Wool: Ottoman Textile Designs in Turkish Rugs’ at www.iath.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/gp/ 13| See Paquin, ibid., figs.21-23 and notes 16-19 for illustrations and discussion of the use of the reciprocal trefoil motif in carpets, textiles, tiles,

and the other Turanian arts, including a depiction of its textile use as an overall repeat pattern on a tent. 14| Petsopoulos, op.cit., p.133. 15| Rogers, op.cit., p.29. For a 16th century brocade with a tiger stripe lattice see Atasoy et al., op.cit., fig.191. 16| The tiger-stripe lattice not only

appears on Iznik wares but also continues in the 18th century as a tile revetment design, as in an elaborate revival fireplace in the Victoria & Albert Museum (Tim Stanley, Palace and Mosque,London 2004, pl.120). The lattice design also appears with rather stiff drawing in a white-ground pile

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