A collection of six Ottoman silver and gilt-thread embroidered leather wallets, Turkey, Constantinople, 17th and 18th century

This group of wallets showcases the variety and refined embroidery used on souvenirs produced in the Ottoman empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The five rectangular strapless wallets all bear a date and the city in which there were purchased, either Smyrna (present day Izmir) or Constantinople. Such pieces were often brought back by travellers as souvenirs or given as gifts to diplomatic travellers.

One wallet in this group is embroidered with the name ‘Cav. Giovanni Dick / Constantinople 1775’. John Dick (1721-1804) was a merchant in Rotterdam, married to Ann Bragg (d.1781). He became the British Consul in Leghorn (Livorno) in Italy in 1754 and remained in the post until his retirement in 1776. He was knighted in the order of St Anne in the summer of 1770 by Empress Catherine II of Russia. A portrait of John Dick, also titled Cav. Giovanni Dick, is now in the British Museum, London, inv. vo.1943,0410.423. Another wallet is embroidered with the name 'Iames Varey esq.', dated Constantinople 1706’. A James Varey is recorded as being the private secretary of Sir Robert Sutton (1671-1746), the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1700-17 and the agent for the Levant Company at Constantinople.