Ceramic 26 - 16th C Iznik plate

AN IZNIK POLYCHROME POTTERY DISH, TURKEY, CIRCA 1575 of shallow round form with an everted rim, decorated in underglaze cobalt blue, green and relief red with black outlines, with a central flowerhead in the cavetto and four stylised palmettes on a a fish-scale design, the rim with a broken wave pattern interspersed by S-shaped motifs, the reverse with flowerheads and foliate bouquets

 

Rim decorations

 

 I tried something new with this plate. Sigal had suggested I lay an undercoat of white on my tiles before scratching off the blue. I don't feel I can start using this method on my tiles because I'm a quarter of the way through and really don't want them to be different.
So, I decided to try that method on this plate because the cleanliness of the white is essential to the design. So I painted three layers of white, and then three of red/green/blue over the top. On the up side, the large expanses of colour aren't streaky like on other plates. The downside, I have to be exceptionally careful when scratching off the glaze. There are small spots on this plate where the scratchings have remained, or the coloured glaze has bubbled off and left white dots. I'll have to try again with less white, see if having a thinner coating of glaze makes a different.

This is the last plate for a while. I've got to organise an event in March and I'm running out of time!

 

The complete plate.