The KÜTAHYA: Sadberk Hanım Museum's Kütahya Tile and Ceramic Collection Exhibition will be held at Sadberk Hanım Museum and remain open from 8 March until 25 November 2018. The exhibition encompasses Kütahya ware in all its wide diversity of form and decoration, and is accompanied by a comprehensive book on the subject. Curators of the exhibition are Hülya Bilgi and İdil Zanbak Vermeersch, who have also prepared the catalogue.

The Ottoman period tiles and ceramics collection is one of the most important of the Sadberk Hanım Museum collections. It consists of ware made in potteries in Iznik, Kütahya and Çanakkale, which were the three main centres of Ottoman tile and ceramic art between the 15th and early 20th centuries; enabling the development of production over this period to be clearly understood.

Organised as one of the major events on Sadberk Hanım Museum's programme for 2018, the exhibition presents examples of tiles and ceramics produced in Kütahya, where pottery has been made without interruption since antiquity and which in Ottoman times became the second most important source of tiles after Iznik. Sadberk Hanım Museum's Kütahya tile and ceramic collection is here exhibited chronologically and according to stylistic features.

The exhibition is a reflection of production in Kütahya between the 18th and 20th centuries, during the Ottoman period. The diversity of the exhibits means that they throw light on both the artistic and technical aspects of Kütahya tile and ceramic production; tracing changes over time in decoration, form, and quality of the paste and glaze. Ceramic finds uncovered in the course of public infrastructure works in the city of Kütahya in 1979 demonstrated that production in Kütahya continued in parallel with that of Iznik. This ancient art managed to survive in Kütahya for centuries, from early Ottoman times onwards. Kütahya's master potters and tile makers maintained a high level of creativity and while styles changed throughout the period they continued to meet the needs of ordinary people for domestic ware, while at the same time producing tiles to embellish the walls of monumental buildings. Kütahya tiles and ceramics had long since found their way into museums and private collections in the 19th century, and today are increasingly sought after by collectors.