Fritware jug, painted in blue and turquoise under a transparent glaze

Both the shape, in a simplified version, and the decoration of this jug were copied from contemporary jugs of silver (see 15/1986). The decoration was used in the period from 1520 to 1550 and was previously designated as Golden Horn, because it was erroneously believed that this is where it was produced in Istanbul. The dense spirals with little leaves are also highly reminiscent of the ones found on the ornamental sultan’s monograms (tughras) on imperial decrees (firmans) in the 16th century (see 51/2002). For this reason, this fairly short-lived spiral style is also called the tughrakes style.

The palette is nearly always blue and white, sometimes supplemented with turquoise, as here.