Insert from a Coptic Garment
Not on view
At first glance this textile’s colorful palette, central mirrored design, and floriated medallion frame seem to recall Byzantine imperial silks. Yet this fragment is made entirely in wool, woven in a "tapestry weave", in which repeating patterns must be added into the textile’s structure, and are not the result of the loom itself. The medallion frames a scene of two facing lions around a vase, from which emerges a composite floral form reminiscent of Sasanian winged motifs. Both the iconography and method of manufacture place this piece in the transitional period of the earliest Islamic centuries.
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