A ZOOMORPHIC FREE-BLOWN GLASS CONTAINER
Beykoz, Istanbul, Ottoman Turkey, 19th century

In the characteristic shape of a plump nightingale (bülbül), resting on three sloping feet, with a large, rounded breast and hot-worked beak, wings and jagged tail, the opalescent white glass body sprinkled with uneven cobalt blue enamel speckles, in the middle of its back an applied metal opening once locked with a screwed-in locker now missing, possibly used as an essence bottle, 13.5cm x 16.2cm.

A similar opalescent glass bird-shaped container attributed to the 19th-century manufacture of Beykoz is published in S. Carboni and D. Whitehouse, Glass of the Sultans, 2001, p. 293, cat. 148. Further analogous examples were also collected by Mando and Londos Oeconomides, whose vast collection of Beykoz coloured and enamelled glass was donated to the Benaki Museum, Athens, ten years ago. The main artwork featured on the cover of the collection's publication produced by the Benaki museum is in fact another bird-shaped bottle (see Mina Moraitou, Of Coloured Glass: The Mando & Londos Oeconomides Collection, Athens, 2013).