Textile fragment with band of linked cartouches and circles
Details
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Title
Textile fragment with band of linked cartouches and circles
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Associated place
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Date
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Material and technique
linen, embroidered with yellow, blue, and brown silk; pulled-thread openwork
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Material index
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Technique index
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Object type
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Dimensions
14 x 14 cm max. (length x width)
embroidery bands 14 x 1.6 cm (length x width)
along length/width 25 / 23 threads/cm (thread count)
ground fabric 0.05 cm max. (thread diameter)
ground fabric 0.02 cm min. (thread diameter)
additional fibre, embroidery 0.05 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.
EA1984.443
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Catalogue text
The four repeating patterns illustrated here [EA1984.443, EA1984.329.a, EA1984.426, EA1984.435] provide us with a glimpse of some of the designs and stitches worked as narrow bands of decoration. The usual format for arranging bands of embroidery on square and rectangular cloths, as seen on the Newberry pieces, leaves the centre ground fabric plain and places three parallel bands along two opposite sides and one across each of the other two. However, two samplers in the collection show how patterns should be adjusted to turn corners, so it is clear that some embroideries did have continuous borders.
The embroidery worked on the bands was sometimes very fine indeed; an example in the collection is even finer than that seen on No.60 [EA1984.329.a], where an interlace pattern has been carried out in stem stitch over a count of four threads on a cloth with a thread count of 36 to one centimetre. The patterns, colours and stitches illustrated here demonstrate the refined nature of this embroidery from the later period of Mamluk rule in Egypt.In: Ellis, Marianne, Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, in association with Greenville: Curious Works Press, 2001)
Two parallel narrow bands with linked cartouches and circles containing a small spiral. The cartouches are either filled with yellow pulled work, or contain an S-shape or a small crescent with a diamond frame. The outlines are embroidered in split stitch, with blue and brown filling also done in split stitch. The bands have a border of yellow embroidery in pulled work.
Each band is 1.6 cm wide, and set at a distance of 3.5 cm.In: Barnes, Ruth and Marianne Ellis, ‘The Newberry Collection of Islamic Embroideries’, 4 vols, 2001, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum
Further reading
Barnes, Ruth and Marianne Ellis, ‘The Newberry Collection of Islamic Embroideries’, 4 vols, 2001, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, vol. iii, vol. i
Ellis, Marianne, Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, in association with Greenville: Curious Works Press, 2001), no. 59 on p. 88, illus. p. 89
Reference URL
