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This
excerpt is from "The
Arts of Armenia" by Dickran Kouymjian. Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, 1992,. By Courtesy of Dr. Dickran Kouymjian - Web
site:
http://armenianstudies.csufresno.edu
In the post-medieval period the Armenian ceramics industry flourished
at one major center: Kütahya, a city in western Asia Minor 125 miles southeast
of Constantinople. An Armenian colony is already noted there in the thirteenth
century and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there was an active scriptorium
too. Armenian manufactured ceramics came to dominate the craft industry of the
city. Certainly by the fifteenth century, Armenians were deeply engaged in ceramics.
The earliest dated pieces, inscribed on the bottom in Armenian, are from the
early sixteenth century. They are decorated in the characteristic blue and white
of early Kütahya ware. By the seventeenth century a highly polychrome
faience was fabricated with yellow, green and the famous Armenian tomato
red. The potters produced vessels in a large variety of shapes for diverse
use.
The town became renowned as an Armenian ceramic center in the Ottoman Empire,
and was the major competitor of Iznik, the famous source of most "Islamic" tiles
and vessels of the Ottomans. The Kütahya potters also produced square
tiles for wall decorations. These were used in a number of mosques, mostly
in Constantinople, as well as in churches.
The most spectacular display of Kütahya tiles is in Armenian Cathedral of
St. James in Jerusalem. Among the thousands decorating various parts of the monastic
complex there is a special series of pictorial tiles with polychrome scenes of
the Old and New Testament accompanied by an inscriptional band in Armenian. These
were specially commissioned in the early eighteenth century for the renovation
and decoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but due to a dispute between
the various religion authorities that enjoyed custody over this holy shrine,
the work was never carried out. Thus, these Kütahya tiles were used
to embellish the Armenian Patriarchate.
One of the most popular forms originating from the kilns at Kütahya was
the egg-shaped ornaments hung on the chains from which oil lamps were suspended
in churches and mosques. They may have had more than just an ornamental use;
some experts considered them as barriers against mice who, attracted by the animal
fat used in these lamps, would slide off the slick surface of the egg as they
made their way down the chain to the vessel bearing the oil. Kütahya eggs
are variously decorated, but the most common type displays seraphim, the famous
six-winged guardian angels. Other popular shapes of these ceramics are the demi-tasse
cups without handles, saucers, monogrammed plates, rose-water flasks, and lemon
squeezers. Armenian inscriptions abound on Kütahya vessels, whether eggs
or water jugs, flasks or incense burners. The Armenian ceramic industry in Kütahya
flourished until the Armenians were forced to leave the city during the persecutions
of World War I. Several families settled in Jerusalem, where they continue to
produce the polychrome Kütahya style ceramics as souvenirs of the Holy
Land.
New Julfa, the Armenian suburb of Isfahan, founded in the first years of the
seventeenth century, also was a center of Armenian tile production. Large pictorial
panels made of square tiles painted in yellow and blue are found in situ in various
Armenian churches of the city. The scene of the Presentation Magi in the Church
of St. Gevorg dated by an Armenian inscription to 1719 is a fine example.
Functional pottery continued to be made in Greater Armenian right up into the
twentieth century. The ceramic craft is still practiced in Armenia with much
skill. During these modern centuries, many shapes known from the excavated pottery
of Dvin and Ani continued to be fashioned in villages throughout the land, confirming
the consistent tradition ceramic fabrication has always had.
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