OTTOMAN EMBROIDERY

Maltzahn

Detlef

66 I HALI 144

ranged far beyond the preference of traditional embroiderers for offset rows of motifs derived from drawloom textiles. In a sense they were freer and more creative in their use of borrowed designs. It is also clear that our group, like traditional embroidery, was not created in just one set of circumstances. Although all are relatively free in their drawing compared to court workshop pieces, one of our medallion design embroideries ( XI ) clearly has a more ‘rustic’ appearance than the other ( IV ). In other examples the care and skill of the drawing of similar motifs varies widely. We saw above how tiger stripes are drawn with sinuous sophistication in one instance ( II ), yet are barely recognisable in another ( III ). Clouds are drawn with

IX .Below: Three Balls on Waves, Ottoman embroidered panel. Silk on silk, o.62 x 0.81m (2'0" x 2'8"). Courtesy Rippon Boswell, Wiesbaden

11. Left: Çintamani design wool carpet (detail), possibly Selendi, west Anatolia, late 16thearly 17th century. The Textile Museum, Washington DC, 1976.10.1

12. Right: Ottoman çintamanidesign çatma (silk and metal thread velvet) panel (detail), Turkey, 16th century. David Collection, Copenhagen, 25/1962

great fidelity in one border ( I ), while stylised leaves are crudely represented in an analogous border ( X ). We have no evidence for which Ottoman commercial centre could be the source of these pieces, even if some candidates seem more likely than others. For silk textiles, Rogers cites the production of velvets and brocades at Aleppo, Amasya, Caffa, Mardin, and on Chios, but notes that we have no way of distinguishing what was made where. 19 Christian Erber cites 16 different urban centres, both in Anatolia and elsewhere in the empire, where public workshops produced embroideries. 20

An Ottoman provincial centre such as Caffa in the Crimea could certainly have provided the necessary economic and artistic conditions to create our group. Sultan Selim I and his son Süleyman the Magnificent were each in turn apprentice governors in Caffa, which, according to Brian Williams, was “a frontier microcosm of the Sultan’s multi-ethnic capital [Istanbul] and the main economic center for trade between the peoples of the northern Black Sea and Anatolia… the Sultans embellished this city with numerous mosques… public baths, fountains, bazaars, caravanserais, and medreses”. 21 Few of these buildings are still standing and movements of population have left little evidence of the material