Textile fragment with hamsa, or geese, and quatrefoils
Details
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Title
Textile fragment with hamsa, or geese, and quatrefoils
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Associated place
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Date
c. 1400 -
Material and technique
cotton, block-printed with resist, and mordant-dyed pink, red and brown; with repair stitching in blue flax, and a seam in black cotton
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Material index
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Technique index
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Object type
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Dimensions
25.5 x 13 cm max. (length x width)
along length/width 19 / 18 threads/cm max. (thread count) -
No. of items
1
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Credit line
Presented by Professor Percy Newberry, 1941.
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Museum location
Museum department
Eastern Art
Accession no.
EA1990.807
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Catalogue text
A continuous design of geese encircling a medallion, with additional leaves arranged as quatrefoils. The outlines of the design are white, the geese, medallions, and leaves are red and brown, and the background is pink.
Blue stitching to mend a small hole, as well as a black seam. The reverse shows more dye saturation than the surface. The dye analysis has shown that the colorant for the pink was alizarin with purpurin, from Rubia tinctorum L., while the red and brown was probably produced with a combination of colorants. Both morindone and alizarin with purpurin were found present, the first from a variety of morinda root, the second from Rubia tinctorum L. Possibly 15th century; see Cat. no. 797 [EA1990.804] for radiocarbon result.In: Barnes, Ruth, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt: The Newberry Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
Further reading
Barnes, Ruth, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt: The Newberry Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), no. 805 on p. 236 (vol. ii), vol. ii p. 236, vol. ii p. 236 fig. 805 & vol. i pl. 40
Mackie, Louise W., Symbols of Power. Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century (The Cleveland Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2015), illus. p. 411 fig. 103
Reference URL
