Treasury of Turkish Designs: 670 Motifs from Iznik Pottery (Dover Pictorial Archive Series) Paperback – March 1, 1988

Interesting book with many beautiful patterns, for Islamic or Turkish art lovers. The pictures are black and white drawings, they make easy to study the motifs (for colors someone must look other sources). Fast international delivery.

Great reference book for creatives that want to include turkish/central asian designs in their work. Large detailed pieces, a skinny book but has all the essentials for a beginner, a classic not to be missed.

<3

Therapeutic

I have this 1988 original edition. Yes, the designs are only black and white, but they do provide beautiful illustrations of traditional motifs. But I seriously question whether the Dover Publications editor placed the captions properly. For example, pp 28 & 29 are described as having “Designs with holy water flasks,” but there are no flasks in any of the pictured designs. All appear to be showing tulip variations. On the other hand, pp 60-61 designs are captioned,”Tulips,” but the pictured designs all contain flasks surrounded by various flowers, only a very few of which are tulips - several designs have no tulips at all. In the author’s introduction, p X, she describes one of the traditional design types in the book as “Holy-water flask, vase and ewer designs surrounded by flowers,” which seems to be what we actually find on pp 60-61 but not on 28-29. There are many other examples I could give, and I fear that anyone new to Turkish design could come away very confused as to what many of the images are actually depicting. Amazon lists a 1989 version of this book. I wonder if corrections were made in this later printing. Alas, no copies are available, so I don’t know.

This book is a real treasury for one interested in Turkish design art/illumination. (TEZHIP in Turkish) I`m interested in calligraphy and illumination as a hobby and this book is a very good source with its traditional Iznik pottery motifs. The only missing point for me is lack of colourfull pictures of Iznik plates. Everybody interested in design and pottery should see this book.

Wow what a great topic. What a great cover. Turkish ceramic design is all bout color and beautiful graphics. Where is the color? There is NO color (well about 2 pages!). This is all just B&W line drawings!! Would be a great deal at $.25 with free freight.

This book is, as other people have stated, black line drawings of turkish designs. There is not any historical information in this book but the simple pictures are very useful for learning the specific motifs of the Iznik era. I am a ceramic BFA student and found this book very useful as a source of inspirations that I could draw from in designing my own floral motifs.