textile
Details
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Object type
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No. of items
1
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Museum location
Museum department
Eastern Art
Accession no.
EA1990.247
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Catalogue text
Large, continuous lotus vines are arranged to form medallions, each with an elaborate rosette in the centre. Lotus blossoms and ornate leaves emerge from the vines. In addition there is the beginning of a border with narrow bands of rosettes and script. The resist defines the design, the background is blue.
Radiocarbon dating has shown this fragment to be of late 10th- or 11th-century date; the result was 1010 CE +/- 55. Two fragments found at Quseir al-Qadim have a similar lotus vine motif (see Vogelsang-Eastwood 1990: Cat. nos. 27 & 28). In her catalogue description, Vogelsang-Eastwood cannot identify the pattern, but the better state of preservation in the Newberry fragment, as well as the textile illustrated by Pfister (pl. XXVa), help to define the design beyond doubt. The inscription reads 'to its owner...'; see Cat. no. 144 [EA1990.152]. The size of the block used was 14.5 cm. x 12.5 cm. Also published in Barnes 1992b: 10.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. 238 on p. 68 (vol. ii), vol. ii pp. 92 & 163, vol. ii p. 68 fig. 238, vol. i illus. 9, & vol. i pl. 17
Audinet, Karthika, ‘Fustat Fragments: Indian Textiles in the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection’, Textiles Asia Journal, 10, Issue 3, (January 2019), fig. 6 on p. 24
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