Plate

The narrow rim of the slightly concave plate has a border of flower heads. The surface is covered with polychrome flower stems springing from the rim: a bent, leaved tulip, a hyacinth and a blossoming plum bough. The motifs are plain, stylised, painted in clear colours between contour lines: ultramarine, turquoise, green and coral against the white base. The plate was modelled on pieces made in the workshops of Isnik or Kütahya, in the flourishing period of Turkish faience art, i.e. in the 16th-18th century. This plate follows the later, seventeenth century type, which already applied asymmetrical compositions instead of symmetrical ones, and used the colour red. In the second half of the nineteenth century this type was known as "Rhodos" plates, due to a misinformation collected on the basis of objects purchased there by the Cluny Museum in Paris. This is why the pattern described above is called "Rhodos" pattern. Theodore Deck, with his delicate brush movements and bright, colourful decor follows the models faithfully, though the painting under glaze is more artificial and refined in its effect than the original presentation of the seventeenth century patterns. A similar object can be found in the Sammlung Maria und Hans-Jörgen Heuser, Marxen am Berge (see Mundt 1981 p.185, pict. 180 Keysers Grosses Stillexikon, Europa, Kesersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, München, 1982 p.404, pict. 864). There is a similar object in the collection of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts with Inv.No. 5133.