Textile fragment with palmette
Details
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Title
Textile fragment with palmette
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Associated place
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Date
12th - 13th century (1101 - 1300)
Seljuq of Rum Period (1081 - 1307) -
Material and technique
linen, embroidered with red, yellow, and blue silk; embroidered roundel linen backing; with a hem in flax
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Material index
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Technique index
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Object type
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Dimensions
10 x 10 cm max. (length x width)
along length/width 26 / 26 threads/cm (thread count)
ground fabric 0.02 cm (thread diameter)
additional fibre, embroidery 0.06 cm (thread diameter) -
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.
EA1984.89
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Catalogue text
A yellow palmette with curving tendrils contains a smaller blue palmette, both with red outlines.
The embroidery is sewn onto a second linen fragment with additional, similar embroidery (fragmentary), shaped into a roundel with a curved hem.In: Barnes, Ruth and Marianne Ellis, ‘The Newberry Collection of Islamic Embroideries’, 4 vols, 2001, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum
There are a number of circular embroideries in the collection and some, like this one, have been fashioned from another textile. This design of a palmette nestling within a larger palmette, worked in split stitch in three colours, has been chosen to decorate a roundel. Because it is so worn we cannot be sure whether it was made as a cover for a jar but this is its most likely function. Its place of origin is equally difficult to determine but it is different from the various types of embroidery from Egypt and is so similar in colouring and technique to fragment No.11 [EA1984.264] that it was possibly made in Seljuk Anatolia or Syria.
In: Ellis, Marianne, Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, in association with Greenville: Curious Works Press, 2001)
Further reading
Barnes, Ruth and Marianne Ellis, ‘The Newberry Collection of Islamic Embroideries’, 4 vols, 2001, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, vol. ii, vol. i
Ellis, Marianne, Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, in association with Greenville: Curious Works Press, 2001), no. 10 on p. 22, illus. p. 22
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