underglaze painted fritware, the cintamani and tiger stripe design executed in black under and transparent turquoise tinted glaze, mounted for wall hanging, 29 x 26.3cm (max. and min. diam.).

Provenance: Sir Howard Hodgkin (1932-2017). Acquired at auction in Paris..

Published: Millner 2015, fig.6.122, p.298.

The design of this series of large hexagonal tiles comes in two palettes: blue in two tones with apple green on a white ground, and black with turquoise ground as here. It is not known which building they originally came from, but there are several examples of both types in museums across the world, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where there is a panel of eleven pieces, the British Museum, the Potteries Museum, Stoke on Trent, the Louvre, Paris, the Brooklyn Museum, New York, the Sadberk Hanim Museum, Istanbul and the David Collection, Copenhagen. Hexagonal tiles were much more commonly used in the 15th and early 16th centuries in Syria, but the design on this tile makes its classical Ottoman date unambiguous. The only substantial group of Ottoman hexagonal tiles still remaining in situ in Damascus are to be found in the prayer hall and courtyard of the Darwishiyya Mosque (1575), but these are in a variety of other designs. For an example of the white ground version in the Potteries Museum, Stoke on Trent, see Millner 2015, fig.6.91, p.282. For the Victoria and Albert Museum panel, see https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O113293/tile-unknown/