The Jile Triangle

The tile is located in the Art from Islamic Lands gallery, in room 2550, on the second floor of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum on Harvard University Campus. The object number is 1960.102. It is located with a series of Ottoman tiles on the Eastern-most wall of the one-room gallery. The tile, created between 1520 and 1540, is from Iznik, Turkey. It is composed of fritware ceramic painted under glaze. The shape is a hexagon with a circular floral pattern derived from a central decoration.
The pattern is very repetitive, yet incredibly intricate. New shapes are introduced at each level from the center without breaking from the originated theme. The centerpiece is a three-section triangle, with an explicit, white equilateral triangle asserting the …show more content…
The tips of this new triangle each leads into a new stylized locus, with exactly the same design, color and scale as the central ones. These flowers, however, are separated across the tile. Between these, near the sides of the bigger triangle, is a new shape. This figure has the general form of the lotuses, yet it is manipulated to create smaller, more elaborate shapes. Now the petals are drawn out into larger, simpler shapes defined with aqua, but made up of dark blue. The center of the flower is an upside-down heart with a white stem. It appears as if two more petals are folding into one another. On the tip of the upside heart is a Hamsa-like form in dark blue that points towards the edges of the tile. Between the two types of lotus shapes, of which there are three of each, is a small floral design. The circular flowers have an aqua center, surrounded in the dark blue, with five blue spikes jutting out to reach the outer layer of blue petals. The outline of the upside-down heart flows out to the middle of the flowers, drawing them into the pattern. There are six of these in this level of the composition; however, overall this is the most repetitive