Coffee house scene (recto) and Persian calligraphy (verso), folio from an Ottoman album

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Coffee house scene (recto) and Persian calligraphy (verso), folio from an Ottoman album. Across Iran, India and Turkey, from the sixteenth century at least, albums (or muraqqa`) had become an important way of storing and presenting one's diverse collection of artworks on paper: valuable specimens of calligraphy, single-page paintings or drawings, and even European prints, all re-mounted in a careful sequence. This album was compiled in early seventeenth-century Ottoman Istanbul, probably for a private citizen. Album-page, ink, colours and gold on paper, mounted on gold-flecked card, painting with calligraphy (recto) and calligraphy with tinted drawing (verso), one of twelve detached folios from an Ottoman album, assembled Istanbul, Turkey, c. 1620. Recto: coffee house scene with men drinking, reading and playing board games, Persian calligraphy in nasta`liq script, mounted on marbled (ebru) paper. Verso: panel of Persian poetry in nasta`liq script signed Shah Mahmud Nishapuri, tinted drawing of two angels with hunting birds, lightly inscribed Bihzad, mounted on gold-flecked paper.