The Material World of Early Modern Ottoman Women: Ornaments, Robes and Domestic Furnishings in Istanbul and Bursa

Abstract

The present article investigates the jewelry and domestic furnishings owned by wealthy women who died in Bursa during the early 1730s, combining the data derived from the estate inventories of the decedents with imagery, both Ottoman and non-Ottoman, dating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This tentative linkage between the written and the visual has made it possible to ‘zoom in’ on the manner in which well-to-do females of eighteenth-century Bursa decorated their homes, and speculate about the considerations that induced them to use the most valuable textiles largely for home furnishings as opposed to garments.