The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 25, 2024

Fragment with peacocks and inscription

Fragment with peacocks and inscription

1000–1100s
Location: not on view

Description

One of the stories in "The Thousand and One Nights" is of a slave girl named Zumurud who lived in Khurasan and embroidered curtains with designs of animals and birds in colored silk and gold threads. Sumptuous embroideries such as Zumurud made were not only commissioned by rulers, caliphs, and court officials but also widely exported. Today, less than a dozen fragments of these rich embroideries survive. All are worked on "mulham," a fabric having silk warps and cotton wefts that was a speciality of Iran and Iraq. With the exception of the Cleveland Museum of Art's fragment 1952.257, which was found in Baghdad, all of the known examples were preserved until the 1900s in Egyptian graves and refuse heaps.
  • (Mme. Paul Mallon, Paris).
  • Lamm, C. J. Cotton in Mediaeval Textiles of the Near East. Paris: P. Geuthner, 1937. p. 126
    Wiet, Gaston. "Tissus Brodes Mesopotamiens." Ars Islamica 4 (1937): 54-63. p. 54-63, fig. 3 25167029
    Underhill, Gertrude. "An Eleventh-Century Mesopotamian Embroidery." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 26, no. 1 (1939): 4-5. p. 4-5 25137977
    Cott, Perry Blythe. Siculo-Arabic Ivories. [Princeton]: Publ. for the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University, 1939. pl. 75d
    Monneret de Villard, Ugo. Le pitture musulmane al soffitto della Cappella palatina in Palermo. Roma: La Libreria dello Stato, 1950. p. 36, no. 164
    Mackie, Louise W. Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century. Cleveland; New Haven: Cleveland Museum of Art; Yale University Press, 2015. Reproduced: P. 159, fig. 4.31; Mentioned: P. 158
  • {{cite web|title=Fragment with peacocks and inscription|url=false|author=|year=1000–1100s|access-date=25 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1938.300