The tiles at the Edirne Selimiye
The Edirne’s Selimiye is Sinan’s most beautiful, most graceful construction. It also sports arguably the finest, best-painted, most beautiful Iznik tiles ever.
Tiles at the Muradiye in Edirne
The Muradiye complex in Edirne — like the Muradiye complex in Bursa — was built by a pious Sultan (Murad II) for a religious community he always said he intended to join himself (and did — twice, each time abdicating in order to do so).
Both complexes were built well outside city walls – suggesting another calculation behind the foundation: religious communities of single men living together are famously troublesome and the Sultan may have been shipping the dervishes out of his way. Each foundation was a vast project for its time: a large, beautifully decorated mosque (which doubled as the dervish residence). a medresa (school), a soup kitchen.
As the cities grew, both Muradiyes became located downtown; but the dramatic shrinkage of Edirne in modern times (from perhaps 250K in 1600s to 20K today) means that the Edirne Muradiye once again lies outside the city walls. One reaches it via a dusty road with a few low lying buildings, an itinerant vendor selling fresh cheese out of a donkey cart, old men playing backgammon in the shade of a weeping willow. The mosque is locked, but in the summer the hoca gives religion lessons to seven ragged gypsy children; he lets you in and leaves you alone to do all the photographing and sketching you want; and if you speak two words of Turkish, he’ll treat you to the sweets from his lunchbox.
The tiles of the Edirne Muradiye are very special. They were clearly painted by a master painter; not every one is unique – there are several repeats – but most are; no similar Iznik tiles have been found anywhere else.
Some 15th and 16th century Portuguese colored tiles (azulejo)
From a temporary show at the Museu de Azulejo, Lisbon.
Iznik pottery at the Çinili Koşk, Istanbul Archeology Museums, Istanbul
The quality of design and painting on this plate richly deserved the painstaking gluing together of the thirty some pieces into which it had been broken. Other delightful pieces at the Çinili Koşk include this fanciful 16th century pitcher (missing a handle), dug up near the Grand Bazaar:
(what would you call this pattern? “Castles in the clouds”? “Earthquake”?)
and two very beautifully painted lamps:
Some azulejo tiles from São Vicente de Fora, Lisbon
Among Lisbon’s many mysteries is her patron saint who arrived in the city… as a dead corpse washed up on her shores. The church dedicated to him (and the patriarch’s seat) remained for many years outside the city walls. The monks being monks — and therefore men and therefore always liable to come up with some unruly scheme no matter how saintly they were supposed to be — were kept firmly under lock and key — to — ahem — protect the innocent. Their only chance to disport themselves out of doors were the monastery’s two large cloisters, of which this is one, now deliciously empty. Both are still covered all around, up and down, in azulejos, the Portuguese version of the colored wall tile and one of Portugal’s greatest — and most ubiquitous — homegrown art-forms (and, unjustly, hardly known outside her borders). Tellingly, the scenes depicted on the walls of the cloisters were those of… the great outdoors, to give the locked-up men a semblance of the pleasure of walking unimpeded through the countryside.
Note: these photos are intentionally HUGE. Look at the details: the variety of different styles of brushwork — one really pays attention to brushwork in monochrome art!
Notes on The Cultured Life 
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