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Dish Depicting Two Birds among Flowering Plants

Unidentified potter, Iznik, ca. 1575–90. Iznik, Turkey.

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Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A round Iznik ceramic dish with a scalloped blue rim, painted with two blue birds among red and pink flowers and green stems on a white ground.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

In the sixteenth century the potters of Iznik, in western Turkey, made ceramics for the Ottoman court in brilliant blue, turquoise, green and a tomato red that was hard to fire well. This dish is a garden. A large red flower opens at the center, carnations and smaller blooms lean in from the edges, and two blue birds with long tails perch in the middle of it all. Around the rim runs a scalloped border in cobalt and white. The painter had a lively, slightly loose hand; the stems curve as though a breeze were moving them. It was made to be used and admired at the same time.

Look closely

  1. Find both birds. Are they looking at each other?
  2. Look for the raised red. Can you see that it stands slightly above the surface?
  3. Follow the border around the rim. Is the pattern the same all the way round?

While you sit

A whole garden on a plate. Sit in it for a while.

Your seat in the galleries: a low tile-red divan with cobalt bolsters.

About the work

Title
Dish Depicting Two Birds among Flowering Plants
Artist
Unidentified potter, Iznik
Date
ca. 1575–90
From
Iznik, Turkey
Medium
Stonepaste; polychrome painted under transparent glaze
Size
H. 2 3/8 in. (6 cm)
Rights
Public domain
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record
The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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