Osman Hamdi Bey’s ‘Flowers in a Vase’ (signed and dated 1876) is the artist’s only known still life painting. At the center of the composition, placed on a partially visible wooden table, stands a Chinese porcelain vase decorated with peony and peacock motifs, holding dry stalks of grain. To its right, a blue cap with a red tassel rests against a stack of books, arranged on a piece of fabric draped over the table’s edge. On the left, a broad, shallow Mamluk copper vessel, filled with a few stalks, balances the composition. One of the painting’s most striking elements is an Uşak carpet, suspended from the upper left corner.
The depiction of carpets from Anatolia, Persia, and the Mamluk domains became increasingly widespread in European painting from the fourteenth century onward. Initially presented in sacred contexts, most often beneath the Virgin and saints as symbols of sanctity and divinity, these carpets gradually entered secular genres such as portraiture and still life, where they came to signify luxury, power, erudition, and elevated social standing. At the same time, they reflected the dynamics of cultural exchange and commercial ties between Europe and the East, and today serve as invaluable sources for the study of early Middle Eastern carpets. Frequently represented in the works of Renaissance masters such as Lorenzo Lotto, Hans Holbein, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Carlo Crivelli, these carpets became so closely associated with particular artists that their names came to designate specific carpet types.
Osman Hamdi Bey also made frequent use of carpets in his paintings. While this recalls European precedents, his approach is distinctly his own. He most often incorporated carpets into interior scenes, though they occasionally appear in outdoor settings as well. His compositions generally feature a limited group of carpets drawn from his personal collection, repeatedly employed across different works. The Uşak carpet in ‘Flowers in a Vase’, however, is unique within his oeuvre, appearing only in this singular example.
