Sash with Flowering Plants

Sash

A study of paintings from Iran indicates that in the early sixteenth century the typical waist girdle was a leather strap with metal plaques, which then gave way to a narrow textile band with gold fasteners.[1] By the seventeenth century, a long and wide sash wrapped and knotted around the waist was customary.[2] These sashes had a central field of narrow stripes with decorative panels of flowering plants at either end; they were tied so that these floral panels were visible.

The sash was an indispensible accessory and a tool for projecting the status of the wearer. Thomas Herbert, part of an English embassy to Iran in the late 1620s, remarked on both the length of these sashes and the meaningful variation in their materials.: "Their waists are girt with fine towels [a plain fabric band worn under the sash] of silk and gold about 8 yards long; those and the sashes distinguish the quality of those that wear them; dukes and others of the noble sort have them woven with gold, merchants and qezelbash with silver; of silk and wool those of inferior rank."[3] By this measure, this Iranian sash, with its gold ground extending the whole of its almost fourteen-foot length, must have been worn by a rich and important personage.[4] A further mark of its quality is the fact that the back of the sash is well finished.

Similar sashes were also worn in the Ottoman and Mughal realms on either side of the Safavid cultural sphere. By the late seventeenth century this fashion had spread to parts of eastern Europe such as Poland and Russia, where textiles imported from Iran and Turkey had become status symbols worn by courtiers.

Marika Sardar in [Peck 2013]

Footnotes:

1. Goetz, Hermann. "The History of Persian Costume." In A Survey of Persian Art, from Prehistoric Times to the Present, edited by Alexander Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman, vol. III, p. 2247. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1938–39.

2. Scarce, Jennifer M. "Vesture and Dress: Fashion, Function, and Impact." In Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart: Textile Arts of Safavid and Qajar Iran, 16th–19th Centuries, edited by Carol Bier, pp. 36, 42. Exh. cat. Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1987.

3. Herbert, Thomas. Travels in Persia, 1627–1629. Abridged and edited by William Foster. New York: Robert M. McBride and Company, 1929, p. 232.

4. Sir Jean Chardin, writing in the 1660s, noted the large costs incurred by courtiers to maintain their wardrobes. Quoted in Floor, Willem. "Economy and Society: Fibers, Fabrics, Factories," In Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart: Textile Arts of Safavid and Qajar Iran, 16th–19th Centuries, by Carol Bier et al., p. 22. Exh. cat. Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1987.


Sash with Five Flowering Plants

With its complex weaving technique and superb craftsmanship, this sash was most likely produced for royalty. It exhibits a rich repertoire of precisely organized floral motifs executed with subtle coloring and defined with dark outlines against a gold background, making it a remarkable example of Persian weaving of the Safavid period.

The layout of this sash is characteristic of many silk sashes of the period. Composed of three units, it has end panels framed by a floral border edged with fringe, a main field with horizontal bands, and borders along the sides. Each end panel features a row of five flowering plants depicting an unusual combination of flowers such as poppies, thistles, and carnations.[1] The main field consists of alternating bands in two different patterns that run across the width of the sash: one band displays a geometric floral motif, the other a scrolling vine with blossoms of iris and rose. The side borders depict various other flowers arranged in sprays.[2]

Sashes such as this one were worn by Safavid royalty and nobility and were produced for export to Europe. It was common practice in the Safavid courts for a robe of honor and a luxurious sash to be granted to a person of high rank. According to the observation of Thomas Herbert, traveling in Persia between 1627 and 1629, "Dukes and other of the noble sort have them woven with gold, merchants and coozelbashaws [soldiers in the army of Shah ‘Abbas I] with silver; of silk or wool those of inferior rank."[3] Not only the type of sash but also the manner of girding the sash around the waist would indicate the social status of its wearer. Frequently, a long, richly patterned sash was worn with another, or even with two other shorter, narrower monochromatic sashes.

This type of sash was fashionable in Iran in the late sixteenth century and soon appeared in eastern Europe as the most prized accessory of a man’s ensemble. The sashes were brought there along with other luxury products from the East (particularly from Turkey and Persia), either as traded goods or through diplomatic relationships. Armenian merchants played a significant role in the import and distribution of these sashes throughout the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795). From the first half of the eighteenth century, such sashes were used as the prototype for Polish domestic production, begun by Armenian weavers. This led to the creation of the elaborate sashes of silk and metal thread that became an essential element of a nobleman’s national attire.[4]

The outstanding quality of this sash is achieved in part by the use of a large number of silk wefts in varying shades of color, all interwoven with gold and silver thread. The majority of those wefts in orange-salmon, green, citrus-green, brown, and gilt-metal thread are bound together in the weave structure. They are carried from selvage to selvage, giving the back of the sash a polychromatic appearance and making it seem finished on both sides. Short floats of brocaded, discontinuous wefts in white, pink, purple-gray, and silver-metal thread occur only in small areas of blossoms, enriching the elegant pattern.[5] These technical features testify to the exceptional quality of this textile and to the great skill of its weavers.

Janina Poskrobko in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

Footnotes:

1. In Persian sashes, the number of design units in end panels can range from four to seven. In contrast, Indian sashes have three to six motifs; Armenian sashes have two or three. The majority of Polish sashes feature two design units; some have either one or three.

2. A sash with an almost identical pattern, in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, is illustrated in Loukonine, Vladimir, and Anatoli Ivanov. Lost Treasures of Persia: Persian Art in the Hermitage Museum. Washington, D.C., 1996, pp. 50, 239.

3. Herbert, Thomas. Travels in Persia, 1627–1629. London, [1928], p. 232. Also, a detailed description of the Persian male attire is provided by Floor, Willem M. The Persian Textile Industry in Historical Perspective, 1500–1925. Moyen Orient et Ocean Indien, XVIe–XIXe s., 11. Paris, 1999.

4. In Poland, the largest collections of Polish and Eastern sashes are found in the Muzeum Narodowe, Cracow; the Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw; the Muzeum Narodowe, Poznan; the Centralne Muzeum Włokiennictwa, Lodz; and the Muzeum Diecezjalne, Płock. For a brief description of Persian sashes in Polish collections, see Biedrońska-Słota, Beata. "Persian Sashes Preserved in Polish Collections." In Thompson, John, Daniel Shaffer, and Pirjetta Mildh, eds. Carpets and Textiles in the Iranian World 1400–1700: Proceedings of the Conference held at the Ashmolean Museum on 30–31 August 2003. Oxford and Genoa, 2010, pp. 176–85.

5. For technical descriptions of Persian textiles, see Reath, Nancy Andrews, and Eleanor B. Sachs. Persian Textiles and Their Technique from the Sixth to the Eighteenth Centuries Including a System for General Textile Classification. Florence House Memorial Collection. New Haven and London, 1937.

George D. Pratt, New York (until 1933; gifted to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Silks of the Safavid Period," December 9, 2003–March 14, 2004, no catalogue.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800," September 9, 2013–January 5, 2014, no. 101A.

Dimand, Maurice S. A Handbook of Muhammadan Art. 2nd rev. and enl. ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1944. p. 269, ill. fig. 177 (b/w).

"Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York." In The Arts of Islam. Berlin, 1981. no. 93, pp. 224–25, ill. (b/w).

Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, ed. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 177, pp. 253–54, ill. (color).

Peck, Amelia, ed. Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013. no. 101A, pp. 268–71, ill. (color).

Flood, Finbarr Barry, and Gulru Necipoglu. "From the Mongols to Modernism." In A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture. vol. 2. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2017. pp. 953–54, ill. fig. 36.5 (b/w).