Tiles Expert Ride Wrong Elevator to Cache of Purloined Tiles in London Museum

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Hürriyet Newspaper, 22 January 2019)


Notice to museum workers: never let a glazed tiles expert get 
on an elevator - especially the wrong one!

Hayal Güleç, an academician at Süleyman Demirel University (SDU)
in İsparta, was in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum doing
research when she got on the wrong elevator.  Ğüleç emerged from
the elevator in the museum's basement storeroom and saw thousands
of "çini" (porcelain tiles) so she asked museum officials if she could
examine them.

At first, Güleç was denied permission but she continued to correspond
with the museum after she returned to Turkey.  Güleç, whose thesis
topic is 16th century glazed tiles, finally received permission from the
museum and returned to England twice, at her own expense, to view
the tiles.  At the museum, Güleç photographed 67 tiles from the
Ottoman period in the basement storeroom and identified 44 tiles
that had been removed from historical treasures in Turkey.




Among the tiles, Güleç found a letter written in French that shocked
her and has sparked amazement in the scholarly world, as well. She
examined the letter with the help of  SDU's Dr. Süreyya Eroğlu and
determined that there was a relationship between the letter and
French restoration expert Leon Parville, who had been assigned by
Ahmet Vefik Paşa in 1863 to repair the damage in the Bursa Yeşil
Cami (Green Mosque) and tomb, caused by the 1855 earthquake in
Bursa.


                                 Bursa Earthquake 1855

Güleç said that there is information to the effect that after Parville
finished the restoration work, certain Ottoman intellectuals became
suspicious. Güleç added that in 1923 Ahmet Haşim (a famous
Turkish writer and poet) wrote an article in which he stated that
Parville had brought some tiles back to Europe with him.  She
added that "it is understood that the French letter was written by
Leon Parville's son to the museum (Victoria and Albert Museum).
We saw a document indicating that he wanted to sell to the museum
certain tiles and Oriental pieces that his father had brought back from
Asia.  We noticed in the continuation of the document that 67 tiles
were sold to the museum.  So the letter has given us the chance to
prove something that up until now had not been proven."

Güleç also said that she had found archival records in the museum
that showed that besides the tiles that Parville brought back to
Europe, other individuals had sold tiles to the museum from Topkapı
Palace, Yeni Cami (mosque in Istanbul), the Diyarbakır Sahabeler
mausoleum, 4 other 16th century mosques, the Armenian Catholic
Church and the Takkeci İbrahim Ağa Camisi (located in Zeytinburnu,
Istanbul).   Güleç noted that the Turkish Ministry of Culture and
Tourism had summoned her to discuss her research and was now
aware of the existence of the tiles at the museum in London.



   One of the tiles discovered by Güleç and its original host.