The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 22, 2025

Textile with intersecting streaks of blue and grey against white, bands of three blue lines vertically intercepting them. The textile dissolves into the strands of a fringe on the upper side across which runs gold Kufic script outlined in black (see "Inscriptions"). In the lower half, the textile has worn diagonally away in a rough edge.

Ikat tiraz

900s

Yemen, San'a, Reign of Rassid Imams

Cotton and gold leaf: resist-dyed warp (ikat); plain weave with inscription
Overall: 41.7 x 30 cm (16 7/16 x 11 13/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 1950.524
Location: Not on view

Description

The "flame" pattern was dyed on the vertical warp threads before weaving began by tightly binding them to resist dye penetration, and repeated for each color. The process and fabric are called ikat, a Malaysian word which may have originated in South Arabia. Yemeni ikats with historical Arabic inscriptions from the 10th century are among the oldest known. This text, written in Kufic script with gold leaf outlined in black, is so damaged that it cannot be read.
  • In this textile, the gold leaf layer is so thin it appears slightly red, from the gummy resin used to adhere it. Scanning electron microscopy–energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) of a similar textile in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, determined that the leaf was 90 percent gold and 10 percent silver. And its thickness was measured at 500–900 nanometers. For comparison, a sheet of copy paper has a thickness of 0.1 millimeters; it is roughly 140 times thicker than the gold leaf layer. We would expect these same results for this textile in the CMA’s collection.
  • ?–1950
    (Dr. Emil Delmar [1876–1959], New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1950–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire, Etienne Combe, Jean Sauvaget, and Gaston Wiet. Répertoire chronologique d'épigraphie arabe. Le Caire: Impr. de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1931. vol. IV, p. 174, no. 1544
    Wiet, Gaston. 1935. “Tissus Et Tapisseries Du Musée Arabe Du Caire.” Syria 16 (3): 278–290. p. 287
    Lamm, C. J. Cotton in Mediaeval Textiles of the Near East. Paris: P. Geuthner, 1937. p. 146
    Textile Museum (Washington, D.C.), and Ernst Kühnel. Catalogue of Dated Tiraz Fabrics: Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid. Washington: National Pub. Co, 1952. p. 90
    Golombek, Lisa and Veronica Gervers. "Tiraz Fabrics in the Royal Ontario Museum." In Burnham, Harold B., and Veronika Gervers. Studies in Textile History: In Memory of Harold B. Burnham. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1977. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 92–93, fig. 3
    Edwards, Holly. Patterns and Precision, the Arts and Sciences of Islam. [Washington, D.C.]: National Committee to Honor the Fourteenth Centennial of Islam, 1982. p. 54, no. 186
    Cornu, Georgette, Odile Valansot, and Hélène Meyer. Tissus islamiques de la collection Pfister. Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1992. p. 65
    Balfour-Paul, Jenny. "Islamic Art, VI, 2(ii)(d), Fabrics, before c. 1250: Spain and North Africa, Yemen." In Turner, J. S. The Dictionary of Art. New York: Grove, 1996. p. 438
    Baginski, Alisa and Orit Shamir. “The Earliest Ikat.” HALI; the international journal of Oriental carpets and textiles. [London] Issue 95, November 1997. pp. 86–87
    Bier, Carol. "A Calligrapher's Art: Inscribed Cotton Ikat from Yemen" (2001) works.bepress.com
    Bier, Carol. “Patterns in Time and Space: Technologies of Transfer and the Cultural Transmission of Mathematical Knowledge Across the Indian Ocean.” Ars Orientalis 34 (2004). p. 172-94
    Bier, Carol. "Inscribed Cotton Ikat from Yemen in the Tenth Century CE." in International Shibori Symposium, Feng Zhao, Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, and Edith Cheung. Resist Dye on the Silk Road: Shibori, Clamp Resist and Ikat. Hangzhou: China National Silk Museum, 2014. pp. 32–40 works.bepress.com
    Weinstein, Laura, and Emine Fetvacı. Ink, Silk & Gold: Islamic Art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 2015. p. 36, no.10
    Mackie, Louise W. Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century. Cleveland, OH; New Haven, CT: The Cleveland Museum of Art; Yale University Press, 2015. pp. 123, 215. Similar object reproduced: p. 122
    "The Ubiquitous Ikat." HALI; the international journal of Oriental carpets and textiles. Issue 200. Summer 2019. London: Oguz Press, 1978- London : Hali Publications p. 60-63
    McWilliams, Mary, and Jochen A. Sokoly. Social Fabrics: Inscribed Textiles from Medieval Egyptian Tombs. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Art Museums, 2021. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 56, fig. 9
  • {{cite web|title=Ikat tiraz|url=false|author=|year=900s|access-date=22 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1950.524