A Tchocadar, Plate from The Costume of Turkey, 1802

A large-format color plate titled A Tchocadar, drawn by Octavian Dalvimart and worked by William Poole, published on January 1, 1802 by William Miller of Old Bond Street, London, from the codex The Costume of Turkey, sixty plates after Dalvimart's drawings.

The Tchocadar (Çukadar) was a domestic male servant in a noble Ottoman household. He stands here in full ceremonial dress: a long belted kaftan, sash, striped underlayers, and turban, posed with an elegant and stoic bearing. Dalvimart's folio belongs to the early European ethnographic engagement with the Ottoman Empire, shaped by Enlightenment-era travel, diplomacy, and documentation.

The seller describes the plate as a true stone lithograph with chromolithographic coloration rather than hand coloring, the layered registration of inks visible in the close-up image. Later editions of the series were considerably smaller and printed on lesser paper than the original 1802 run.

Printed on medium-weight india wove paper, sheet approximately 25 x 35.5 cm (10 x 14 in). Accompanied by the original bilingual descriptive title sheet, printed in English and French on recto and verso, giving a contemporaneous account of the Tchocadar's function and attire.