The flower in Turkish traditional ceramics art: it?s treatment as a design element and personal interpretations

Human being has made the shaped soil durable by the invention of firing. After this process, he has generated the ornamentation feeling by slip painting, scratching or polishing on his ceramics pots. In the length of time, this ornamentation feeling has showed variations.Turkish art has entered non-figurative period by the acceptance of Islam and as a result of that the vegetative ornamentations have begun to be used. Later on by a careful nature observation and the analysis of flowers? physical features the flowers have come to life by the styles of their masters. Together with the realistic drawn flower patterns the design called ?hatayi?, which would be described as the vertical cross section of a flower, was composed with the sword leafs, curly branches. In time, this realistic decoration way has been used in many craft productions and carried until today.In accordance with this work the place of naturalistic flowers in the Ottoman Period `çini? and ceramics of Turkish Ceramics Art are important. The variety of flower is so wide. At first sight most of the flowers are known their general features. Naming has been difficult for some patterns because of their advance stylization. The effect of ornamentation style has been carried from Ottoman times to present. The ?çini? plates, vases, pitchers that used for daily life have got used for decoration objects. Eventually new searches have revealed. Flower ornamented ceramics in Turkish Ceramics Art have been chosen as sphere to undertake those searches and to present samples İznik and Kütahya, as historical reference, and ceramics artists ,who are using flowers as a design element in modern ceramics art, have been chosen.Flower in modern ceramics art is a subject for an artist that used rarely instead of being a characteristic working way. It is seen that the most used flower is the tulip in ceramics art. The tulip, which is also a name of a period of Ottoman Empire, is the most leading one that used is ceramics art. Seeing that other flowers? seldom usage in contemporary ceramic works, the flower element has been researched and the reasons of usage in past times has been reviewed.