The Sultan’s Garden ttoman art reflects the wealth, abundance, and influence of an Empire that spanned seven centuries, and at its height, three continents. During the past six decades the concept of an Ottoman court style has emerged both in art historical scholarship and in the popular imagination, given tangible form through publications and museum exhibitions, tourism and its promotion, and through the rising popularity of Ottoman art on the international art market. What many have termed the ‘classical’ Ottoman court style or the ‘floral’ style is characterized above all by the vocabulary of highly distinctive, stylized, yet easily recognizable garden flowers—in particular, tulips, carnations, hyacinths, rosebuds and honeysuckles—that are frequently depicted in virtually all artistic media produced in the Ottoman Empire after the mid-sixteenth century. This style extended beyond the courtly sphere to the village and nomadic weaving traditions of Anatolia and the Ottoman world of the eastern Mediterranean, as well as to artistic traditions beyond the borders of the Ottoman Empire. The textile arts, some of the most luxurious and technically complex products of the Empire, are a valuable source by which to trace the emergence of this design vocabulary and its subsequent diffusion and impact on the larger Ottoman world.
Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century... stylized flowers began to appear throughout the arts of the Ottoman court. Above: Small ‘Kara Memi’ carpet (detail); probably Karapınar district, Konya Province, south-central Anatolia; probably 18th century; The Textile Museum R34.00.1; acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1949