“A Tchocadar”, Dalvimart Plate, The Costume of Turkey, 1802

An original large-format chromolithographic stone lithograph of A TCHOCADAR, drawn by Octavian Dalvimart, engraved by Poole, and published in 1802 as part of The Costume of Turkey, an early nineteenth-century Orientalist folio devoted to Ottoman dress and hierarchy, containing sixty engravings after Dalvimart's drawings.

The plate depicts a Tchocadar (Çukadar), a domestic male servant of a noble Ottoman household, in full ceremonial attire: long belted kaftan, sash, striped underlayers and turban, posed in an elegant, stoic stance. Dalvimart's illustrations were among the earliest systematic European efforts to document the diversity of dress across the Ottoman world, and reflect Enlightenment-era travel, diplomacy and cross-cultural documentation.

Printed by stone lithography with chromolithographic coloration on medium-weight india wove paper, sheet approximately 25 × 35.5 cm (10 × 14 in). The close-up image included here shows ink laid in multiple distinct stages, the overlap and registration of colors that identify a true stone lithograph rather than a reproduction or later offset print. Later editions of the series were considerably smaller and lacked the paper and printing quality of the original 1802 run.

The plate is accompanied by its original separate bilingual title sheet, printed in English and French on recto and verso, giving a contemporaneous account of the Tchocadar's function and attire.