Iznik jug with English mounts

This wheel-thrown fritware jug with ‘sealing-wax’ red hyacinths and cobalt blue pomegranates was made in Iznik (Western Anatolia), a renowned ceramics centre during the Ottoman Empire. It’s characteristic of late sixteenth-century production: the bright red colour was only used from 1560 onwards.

The jug was exported to Elizabethan London where, in 1592/3, it was fitted with fashionable silver-g…