Sashes like this one became popular in seventeenth-century Iran, where they were tied around the waist with the ends hanging down. The arrangement seen here is a common design, consisting of two end panels containing flowering plants separated by a field of narrow alternating bands of floral scrolls. Persian sashes were exported and became especially popular in Poland, one of Persia’s trading partners, where the wealthy elite wore them as accessories. The popularity of the sashes eventually prompted the founding of a number of textile workshops in Poland that produced local variations of the Safavid originals.
