Fragment of Metallic Ground Fabric
1667-1732
Scroll
Fragment of Metallic Ground Fabric
1667-1732
Physical Qualities
Silk, metallic-wrapped silk supplementary wefts, 16-3/4 x 12 in. (43.6 x 30.5 cm.)
Credit Line
Gift of Saidie A. May and Blanche Adler
Object Number
1929.17.10k
A rectangular fragment of woven metal-ground textile. Individual stylized symmetrical floral motifs resembling irises are brocaded within an ogival grid created by intersecting leaf designs. Colors of the design and background alternate within the grid between blue flowers on a silver metallic ground and pink/coral flowers on a gold metallic ground.
The fragment is of a complex weave with a pink foundation warp, bluish-brown supplementary warp, dark green foundation wefts, silver and gold metallic-wrapped continuous wefts; and pink, coral, blue, grey, and lt. green discontinuous wefts.
All four edges of the fragment are unfinished. The bottom and sides are cut. The right edges appear to have been sewn in the past. The top left side has a missing section with partially curved outline. The top has a row of plain continuous green wefts approximately 1/4' wide which resembles a selvage, but has cut threads beyond. This was perhaps a piece at the end of the weaving, the continuous wefts marking the finish of this section of pattern.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by gift, 1929; Blanche Adler.
R.M. Riefstahl, Persian and Indian Textiles From the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century, New York: E. Weyhe, 1923, pp. 7-14, pl. III, nos. 5 and 7; pl. XI, nos.42, 48 and 49; pl. XIV, no. 56; pl. XV, no. 65; pl. XX, no. 97; pl. XXIII, no. 118; pl. XXIV, no. 122. Carol Bier (ed.), Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart: Textile Arts of Safavid and Qajar Iran 16th-19th Centuries, Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1987, p.260, cat. # 64, illus. later example. Lyon, Musée Historique des Tissus, 1985, nos. 34, 35, illus.
Inscribed: None.
