Cuff Band with Bust of a Female

Cuff Band

Although this cuff band was made after the Arab conquest of Egypt its technical and to some extent also stylistic links are with the Byzantine period. Woven on plied linen warps in a tapestry technique in linen and brightly colored wool it was applied (see also MMA 63.178.2). The five-part design consists of a large red central pattern with a bust (female?) in a roundel between two pairs of superimposed white friezes with scrolls filled with birds and animals. Bands of interlocking stylized leaves form exterior borders. Such five-part decorative compositions, very popular from the 6th century onward in silk sleeve appliqués (e.g. on a tunic in the Victoria and Albert Museum, no. 820.1903), were adopted by tapestry weavers and became one of the most popular types of sleeve decoration, as this and other examples illustrate. (e.g. Victoria and Albert Museum 922.1886, Louvre X4788 and X4135, and Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 173544).

This piece is executed in a two-dimensional style with the distinct dark outlines and solid color surface characteristics of the 7th and 8th centuries. The bust, for example, although presented in a three-quarter view implying volume and surface relief, is perceived only as a two-dimensional design. Other motifs of the cuff band are also more abstract than on earlier textiles.The vegetal scroll of the lateral friezes are rendered only as figure-eight-shaped loops, and the single white waves with dots on narrow red stripes separating them are actually late versions of the running wave motif. Only the birds and other animals filling the scrolls retain some of the natural forms of the earlier phases of the design. The borders of interlocking leaves, however, already belong to the sphere of Islamic, especially, Umayyad, ornament. The newest motif of the cuff band, they demonstrate the susceptibility of textile art to change and an expansion of the repertory of the motifs.

Anna Gonosova in [Friedman 1989]

Friedrich FischbachCollection, Wiesbaden (until 1909; sold to Dr. Voos for MMA)

Providence, RI. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. "Beyond the Pharaohs: Egypt and the Copts in the 2nd to 7th Centuries A.D.," February 10, 1989–April 16, 1989, no. 73.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Textiles of Late Antiquity," December 14, 1995–April 7, 1996, no. 16.

Friedman, Florence D. "Egypt and the Copts in the 2nd to 7th Centuries AD." In Beyond the Pharaohs. Providence, R.I.: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1989. no. 73, p. 165, ill. (b/w).