Made about 1600 and attributed to Iznik, Turkey, this stonepaste plate is painted in several colours beneath a transparent glaze. Its young female figure holds a tambourine, which may symbolize the sun; Ottoman poetry sometimes called the sun a tambourine.
The plate is 5.2 centimetres high, with a rim 28.9 centimetres across. It is classified as ceramics.
A figure with a tambourine
The woman playing the instrument is the plate’s central subject.
The decoration was painted under a clear glaze on stonepaste, a ceramic material made largely from ground quartz.
Figural motifs on Iznik pottery
During the seventeenth century, Iznik pottery increasingly featured people, animals, and nonliving subjects including ships. The woman with her tambourine belongs to this wider range of motifs, some of which may have carried meanings beyond their immediate appearance.