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Textile Panel with Birds amid Flowering Vines

Object Name:
Strip
Date:
first half 17th century
Geography:
Attributed to Iran
Medium:
Silk, metal wrapped thread; taqueté
Dimensions:
Textile: H. 38 1/2 in. (97.8 cm)
W. 28 3/4 in. (73 cm)
Mount: H. 44 in. (111.8 cm)
W. 33 1/4 in. (84.5 cm)
Wt. 30 lbs. (13.6 kg)
Classification:
Textiles-Woven
Credit Line:
Rogers Fund, 1926
Accession Number:
26.231.2
Not on view
The interlocking pattern of this silk panel features a popular bird-and-flower motif that alternates direction in each repeated row. The effect of achieving a borderless repeat is a challenge confronting textile designers in the planning phases of the design, and indicates great skill when executed as flawlessly as in this panel. Enhanced with foil-wrapped metal threads covering the ground cloth, bird-and-flower textiles produced in the seventeenth century feature a soft palette of pistachio green and safflower orange that was highly susceptible to fading. The overall shape of this piece indicates that it was used as a chasuble, a sleeveless Christian vestment, attesting to the popularity and status of this type of textile in Europe.
[ Adolph Loewi, Venice, until 1926; sold to MMA]
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Silks of the Safavid Period," December 9, 2003–March 14, 2004, no catalogue.

Dimand, Maurice S. A Handbook of Mohammedan Decorative Arts. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1930. pp. 218–19, ill. fig. 133 (b/w).

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. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937. pp. 10, 28, 57, 78, ill. pl. 21 (b/w).

Harari, Ralph, and Richard Ettinghausen. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, edited by Arthur Upham Pope. Vol. I-VI. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. ill. v. VI, pl. 1065.

Timelines
Iran, 1600-1800 A.D.

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