Iznik Tile Islamic Ceramic Art -- Mosque Tilework HD Wallpaper
Free download β’ 1792Γ1024 β’ 3.1 MB
Support This Seva
This website is a free seva (selfless service). Your small offering helps us create more divine wallpapers and keep the site running for all devotees.
Every βΉ10 / $1 helps. God bless you π
About this image
The individual Iznik tile -- blue on white, turquoise on white, the delicate flowers and geometric tracery of a master ceramic painter's hand -- is one of the most beautiful objects in the history of Islamic decorative art. This HD wallpaper zooms into a single tile in intimate macro detail, revealing the extraordinary complexity of a form of art usually seen only in its collective entirety: the floral and geometric motifs in cobalt blue, turquoise, and white, the precise brushwork that required decades of apprenticeship to achieve, and the surface gloss of the tin-opacified glaze that gives Iznik tiles their characteristic luminosity. Iznik (ancient Nicaea, in modern Turkey) became the center of Ottoman ceramic production in the 15th century, reaching its peak in the 16th century during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The Iznik workshops produced tiles for the greatest mosques of the Ottoman Empire -- the Topkapi Palace, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (new tiles replacing the original Seljuk ones under Suleiman), the Rustem Pasha Mosque and the Sultan Ahmed (Blue) Mosque in Istanbul, which contains over 20,000 Iznik tiles. The iconic Ottoman tulip motif, the carnation, the hyacinth, and the saz leaf -- together with geometric interlace patterns and Arabesque vines -- constitute the visual vocabulary of Iznik ceramic art. Each tile was thrown on a wheel, dried, painted by hand, glazed, and fired twice -- a process taking weeks for a single tile. The tiles covering a single major mosque represent thousands of hours of individual artisanal devotion. Free HD download.
