Bed curtain border

This object is from the collection of Natalia de Shabelsky (1841-1905), a Russian noblewoman compelled to preserve what she perceived as the vanishing folk art traditions of her native country. Traveling extensively throughout Great Russia, she collected many fine examples of textile art of the wealthy peasant class. From the 1870s until moving to France in 1902, Shabelsky amassed a large collection of intricately embroidered hand-woven household textiles and opulent festival garments with rich decoration and elaborate motifs. The Brooklyn Museum holdings include many fine examples including the majority of the garments. Portions of Shabelsky's collection are also housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Cleveland Art Museum, and the Russian Museum of Ethnography in St. Petersburg.

This piece represents the pinnacle of this type of work wherein overcast stitching covers the entire drawnwork grid, employing numerous colors and elaborate detail fillings. The depiction of the faces on the birds is startlingly real, leaping out of the fanciful motifs. Each bird has its own character with subtle differences in facial details. Further evidence of the high quality and seemingly impossible detail of this embroidery is the overcast stitching on the réseau of the bobbin lace, giving it an identical appearance to the drawnwork mesh of the main panel.