60 - Property from the Private Collection of Sybil Maitland Salvin Calverley (1866-1925) and thence by Descent Lots 59-62

Property from the Private Collection of Sybil Maitland Salvin Calverley (1866-1925) and thence by Descent Lots 59-62 A rare Iznik pottery water flask (surahi) Ottoman Turkey, circa 1570-80 With drop-shaped body rising to a knop below the flaring mouth, the brilliant white body painted with swirling red rose, blue hyacinth and red floral sprays, with elongated panels of cobalt and turquoise outlined in black either side of a turquoise knop, the foot and upper flaring section with fired restoration, 44cm. high Sybil Maitland Salvin (1866-1925) was the eldest daughter of ornithologist Osbert Salvin (1835-1898), best known for co-authoring Biologia Centrali-Americana, a 63-volume encyclopedia on the natural history of Central America with reknown Iznik ceramics collector Frederick DuCane Godman (1834-1919), whose 600-piece collection bequeathed by his daughters in 1982 forms the basis of the British Museum's Islamic ceramics collection. The two men met at Trinity College, Oxford in 1853 and became life long friends and collaborators with some of the botanical plates painted by Salvin's wife. Godman and Salvin also collected numerous bird and butterfly specimens presented to the British Museum in 1885, including nearly 520,000 bird skins alone. The British Ornithologists' Union instituted the Godman-Salvin Medal for contributions to ornithology, while a memorial to Godman and Salvin was constructed and is exhibited in the Natural History Museum. In 1893 Sybil Salvin married Edmund Leveson Calverley (1864-1940) and had four children. The family moved first to South Africa and then to Canada in 1912 where they settled. Edmund returned to England shortly after but the rest of the family remained. The family had no particular interest in collecting although Sybil's daughter Amice Calverley was both a music composer and Egyptologist, instrumental to the recording and publication of the decoration in the temple of King Sethos I at Abydos. In 1924, one year before her death, Sybil Salvin Calverley returned to England and donated Islamic ceramics to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge under her husband's name of Mrs E.L. Calverley comprising a wonderful Iznik tile (C.41-1924), an Iznik border tile (C.42-1924), a Chinese Xangxi blue and white dish (C.37-1924), an Ilkhanid lustre-painted tile (C.43-1924) and a Hispano-Moresque lustre bowl (C.39-1924), very similar to our Lot 59. It seems most likely that Sylvia Salvin Calverley either inherited our surahi, tankard, flask and bowl as part of a larger collection of ceramics from her father who in turn acquired them through Godman or that Sybil as the eldest daughter was Godman's goddaughter and inherited them directly from him. Godman died in 1919 a good 20 years after Osbert and it seems highly possible that Godman left the ceramics to Sybil. Salvin family archival papers held at Durham University reveal that Frederick DuCane Godman appears in 5 documents related to the marriage of the Salvin families and was significantly involved in their finances as well as their personal lives. Of Godman's involvement in the acquisition of the present Izniks by the Salvin-Calverley family we can be certain. It is impossible to discuss collectors in the field without mentioning Frederick DuCane Godman. He was one of the most prolific British collectors of Iznik ceramics, representing the second generation of collectors, following on from Louis Huth and others. He began his collection in 1865, possibly inspired by his 1854 visit to Constantinople as a student, but also possibly as a result of the South Kensington Museum loan exhibition of 1862 noted in the introduction. He ended up amassing a superlative group of 144 Iznik pieces. Although Iznik ceramics had been appreciated as exotic rarities in Western collections before this date, Godman was the first to approach the subject with the serious eye of the encyclopedic collector, seeking out only the best examples of each type. It was Godman who discovered the blue and white jug with the date 1510 and place Kutahya which defined the so-called 'Kutahya' group. His purchase of a bowl with inscriptions in Turkish convinced Sir Wollaston Franks of the Turkish origins of Iznik ceramics, which were hitherto universally described as "Persian" ware. Godman was a major contributor to the 1907 exhibition of "Faience of Persia and the Nearer East" at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. He later diversified his collection to include Hispano-Moresque pottery and lustreware tiles. The Iznik bottle is a rare form. The knop at the centre of the neck is a feature indicative of the influence of metalwork, absent on the earliest Iznik bottles. There are also two slightly smaller bottles with comparable designs both from the Godman Collection and now in the British Museum (Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby, Iznik, the Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, London, 1989, pl.728 and 729). The present example manages to convey a great sense of movement, with the swaying saz