Rare Imperial Ottoman Appliqué Tent Panel - SOLD

Project Details

Rare Imperial Ottoman Appliqué Tent Panel – SOLD

Ottoman Empire, Circa 1683, Dimensions: 190 x 344 cm.

On red cotton background, mixed silk fabrics, in hemmed appliqué technique, with a dense floral infilling in red, orange, yellow, green and cream. Two elements are borrowed from Ottoman architecture: arched columns and windows. These architectural elements are profusely decorated with carnations, tulips, floral sprays in vases, and Chinese cloud-bands. The decorative repertoire (viz sprays of carnations, tulips) employed in this panel is derived from the work of 16th century Ottoman court atelier masters including Kara Memi.

Of particular note is the reciprocal trefoil border, a feature of Ottoman architecture and decorative arts including textiles of the late 16th –17th century such as a velvet panel in the Kremlin Armoury Museum, Moscow (inv. no. TK-2683). Please see: Nurhan Atasoy et al, Ipek – The Crescent and the Rose: Imperial Ottoman Silks and Velvets, Azimuth Editions, London, 2001, plate. 94.

The reciprocal trefoil border design can also be seen on the Iznik tiles in the Selimiye Mosque. Please
see: Belgin Demirsar Arli et al, Tiles: Treasures of Anatolian Soil – Ottoman Period, Kale Group Cultural Publications, Istanbul, 2008, fig. 259.

Under two arches are şemse (literally ‘sun’) motifs. Two bands run at the top and the bottom. These are filled with stylized flowers and leaves. A cartouche under the band at the bottom is decorated with intertwined red and green trefoil arches.

Ottoman tents consisted of an outer tent or shell and an inner tent. The inner shells of the imperial tents – like the present tent – were decorated with appliqué work. This type of work is called “nakışlı”, “münakkaş” in Turkish. This embroidery technique involves sewing different shaped and coloured pieces of fabric to a background to create a pattern.

Tents had a special place in Turkish/Ottoman culture. For nomadic and semi-nomadic Turkish and Turkic people hundreds and thousands of tents formed portable towns that could be moved seasonally. In the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tent encampments played a decisive role in military campaigns conducted by Ottoman Turks. Please see Nurhan Atasoy’s Otağ-ı Hümayun: Osmanlı Çadırları, Aygaz, Istanbul, 2000.

In the army simple, undecorated tents were decorated by the janissaries. The pavilion-palace-type tents -which the present piece belongs to- of the Sultan and high-ranking officials were located at the centre and strategic points of the encampment.

Apart from military campaigns, such richly decorated imperial tents were used to hold official banquets, receptions, oaths of allegiance, circumcision and wedding celebrations. These were also used to house the members of the royal family during hunting parties. This remarkable panel is from a tent that was probably part of the booty seized after the second siege of Vienna in 1683, or the battle of Nagyharsány near Mohács in 1687.

Many of these tents were booty taken by Jan III Sobieski following the famous battle outside Vienna on 12 September 1683. Much of the booty including flags, weapons, stirrups, and all sorts of domestic items were awarded to Sobieski in gratitude for his part in the battle. Many such tents are depicted in
the sketch book of the royal painter Martin Altomonte (1657-1745). Imperial Ottoman tents, from which our panel was a part, were highly prized by members of the Austrian-Polish aristocracy because they were made of costly shimmering materials, ideal for ceremonies and warfare. The Polish used them when traveling, for negotiations, for hunting, congresses, feasts, and garden recreational activities, and not to forget military expeditions.

Today most of these tents are preserved in museums such as the Royal Castle at Wawel in Cracow, and the Rustkammer, Staatlische Kunstsammlungen in Dresden. Please see Magdalena Piwocka, “Turkish Tents in Poland”, War and Peace: Ottoman – Polish Relations in the 15th-19th Centuries, Ed. Selmin Kangal, Fako, 1999, p. 57.

Another closely related example is the Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe, please see Ernst Petrasch et al. Die Karlsruher Turkenbeute, Hirmer Verlag Munchen, Munchen, 1991, p. 317. For a monograph on Ottoman tents based on a very similar example to ours at the Royal Armory in Madrid, dated between 1650-1697, by Antonio Fernandes Puertas’s please see La Tienda Turca Ottomana de la Real Armeria.

Puertas studies the marquee in detail and praises it with the following words “When the tent was exhibited in the exhibition, it was clear that this was an outstanding piece that is unique in Spain. It is rather like an architectural pavilion fashioned in fabric” please see: ibid, p. 121.

Categories: Notable Sales
Credits: From the Collection of a French Diplomat, Nievre.

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Rare Imperial Ottoman Appliqué Tent Panel – SOLD

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