The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 20, 2025

Vertically long embroidered band depicting a light-green grapevine winding over a gold embroidered background and making a column of three roughly oval sections, a tendril curving inside each on which a person with light skin tone sits. Each person wears blue and green robes, those in the upper and lower sections wearing cloth hats and bearded while the person in the center wears a gold crown. The grape clusters are a fifth the leaves' size.

Orphrey Band: The Tree of Jesse

c. 1350

England, 14th century

Silk, gold and silver thread, linen; embroidery: split and couching stitches
Overall: 85.7 x 18.1 cm (33 3/4 x 7 1/8 in.); Mounted: 109.2 x 28.6 cm (43 x 11 1/4 in.)
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1949.503
Location: Not on view

Description

From the 1100s to the 1300s in London, both men and women worked as professional embroiderers. Here, the Tree of Jesse, a favorite medieval theme illustrating the ancestry of Christ, appears as a grapevine with three ancestors—Achim, Ezechias, and Eliud—seated on tendrils. Painters often provided embroiderers with designs, revealing a close relationship between the professions.
  • Close looking often can reveal unusual or unexpected materials in an object. This orphrey band is one of three pieces; another piece is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection—having been given to the MMA in 2009 as part of the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection—and the third is on loan to the MMA. In 1950, Brooklyn curator Elizabeth Riefstahl noted that the bunches of grapes depicted in two of the three pieces, including Cleveland’s, appeared to be beads but were in fact seeds. Building on this earlier research, and using analytical equipment in the CMA’s conservation department, conservators took close-up microscopic images of these seeds and sent them to the Oxford University Herbaria; a plant science curator identified these seeds as the fruit from Galium aparine (Rubiaceae). Common names for this plant are sticky weed and sticky willy. Until the 1700s, extracts of sticky weed were used to treat skin ailments and to encourage wound healing. Its tiny hooked hairs readily attach to cloth or animal fur.
  • formerly in the collection of Marquis de Cubas, Madrid; Joseph Brummer collection, New York; A. Bradley Martin, New York.
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Arts of the Middle Ages; A Loan Exhibition, February 17 to March 24, 1940. Boston, Mass: Museum of Fine Arts, 1940. no. 100b, p. 35
    Shepherd, Dorothy G. "An English Embroidery." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. 37, no. 4 (1950): p. 66-68 25141627
    Riefstahl, Elizabeth. "An Embroidered Tree of Jesse." Brooklyn Museum Bulletin 11, no. 4 (1950): 4-13. Accessed April 24, 2020. p. 4-13 26458022
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 153 archive.org
    Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts. Aspects of Late Mediaeval Art; The Mediaeval Conference, the Ohio State University. 1958. no. 3 (under textiles)
    King, Donald. Opus Anglicanum; English Medieval Embroidery. [London]: Arts Council, 1963. no. 88, p. 42
    Bober, Harry. 1963. "Medieval Art at Cleveland". Apollo 78. 447-456. p.456
    "Gothic Art 1360-1440." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 50, no. 7 (1963): 174-215. no. 49, pp.176, 207 25151960.
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Reproduced: p. 62 archive.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 62 archive.org
    Mayer-Thurman, Christa C., John Maxon, Aidan Kavanagh, Donald L. Garfield, and Horace T. Allen. Raiment for the Lord's Service: A Thousand Years of Western Vestments. Chicago: Art Institute, 1975. no. 14, p. 82, p. 83 illus
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 71 archive.org
    Martin Nagy, Rebecca. Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985. p. 15, 17-18, 58
    Cleveland Museum of Art. Masterpieces from East and West. New York, NY: Rizzoli International, 1992. p.98
  • Art of Embroidery in Late Medieval Europe (Textile Rotation) - Gallery 115. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 19, 2020-April 11, 2021).
    Only for Beauty? (Textile Rotation) - Gallery 115. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 8, 2014-December 7, 2015).
    Gallery 216 installation. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 1991).
    Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 22-March 17, 1985).
    When Angels Bent Near the Earth to Touch Their Harps of Gold: The Christmas Story. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 1, 1981-January 17, 1982).
    Raiment for the Lord's Service, A Thousand Years of Western Vestments. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (November 11, 1975-January 18, 1976).
    English Medieval Embroidery. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (September 26-November 24, 1963).
    Opus Anglicanum. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (September 26-November 26, 1963).
    Gothic Art 1360-1440. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 6-September 15, 1963).
    Late Medieval Art. Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH (October 31-November 26, 1958).
    Aspects of Late Medieval Art. The Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, OH (October 31-November 20, 1958).
    Aspects of the Middle Ages. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (February 17-March 24, 1940)
  • {{cite web|title=Orphrey Band: The Tree of Jesse|url=false|author=|year=c. 1350|access-date=20 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1949.503