Visit any of the palaces, mansions or large houses that have been preserved intact in Istanbul or Izmir, and you are likely to see a tiled stove along with many other valuable objects. They are generally green, but sometimes blue or white, and seem to hint that they are far more than mere heating apparatus. Even though their flames roar only in winter and they laze idly through the summer months, they still lord it over the other furnishings. Cabinets and tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, huge Chinese vases, beautiful porcelain dinner services, gleaming crystal chandeliers, silver candlesticks, and richly patterned Hereke carpets spread on the floors cannot wrest the limelight from the heart warming presence of a tiled stove. With the advent of central heating, these stoves increasingly became ornamental in function. Before their introduction Turkish houses had been heated by fireplaces and braziers. Of course at that time the point was to heat the people sitting around them, not the house itself.

In large houses inhabited by extended families, redhot embers from open fires in the fireplaces were placed in copper or brass braziers and carried to other parts of the house where people gathered around them. This brought people together, to eat and converse as they kept warm.

In the process of westernisation in late Ottoman times, the stove was one of the many things introduced from the West. Statesmen and intellectuals who had visited the countries of Europe replaced braziers with stoves in their own houses. Although stoves spread heat over a wider area, the attraction of the source of heat continued undiminished, and people began to sit around stoves just as they had done around braziers. Made either of sheet or cast-iron, the stoves were lined with fire bricks and fuelled by coal. When they became fashionable in palaces and grand houses, they began to be adorned with colourful tiles.

They might have lost their function but they were treasured as souvenirs of the past. Many of the loveliest are to be seen at palaces like Dolmabahçe and Yildiz in Istanbul. Then there are many in the hands of collectors like Çetin Yilmaz, who owns 260 tiled stoves, probably the largest collection in the world. He was originally motivated by nostalgic memories of a white tiled stove in his childhood, and setting out in search of one, quickly found himself transformed into a collector. To prevent prices rising due to dealers regarding them as collectors' pieces, he kept his collection a secret for years. When he finally displayed them, his shop in Hasanpaþa in Kadiköy became a 'museum' of tiled stoves.

Tiled stoves have inspired poets and writers. A ruby red tiled stove is mentioned in a poem by Edip Cansever and Selim Ileri talks about them in his accounts of old Istanbul. You should not be surprised if you come across an advertisement on an internet website for 'A tiled stove in very good condition, 4000 dollars.'