Brocaded Silk Cushion Cover & Iranian Striped Silk Surround (early 1600s): Art, History and Details

Brocaded Silk Cushion Cover & Iranian Striped Silk Surround (early 1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Cushion covers, associated with comfort, were made especially to cover cushions placed on divans, the equivalent of sofas. Most were woven in brocaded velvet because the projecting pile could withstand abrasion more effectively than this rare brocaded silk example. Cushion covers typically display a row of six lappets (flaps or folds) across each end of a field decorated with either a repeating motif or a medallion pattern as shown here. Opulent gilt-metal thread forms the elegant minimalist pattern on a lustrous crimson silk ground. All the designs—the medallion and corner medallions, central rosette, and corner tulips, plus the lappets bearing rosettes—are outlined in silhouette.

Object facts

• Title: Brocaded Silk Cushion Cover & Iranian Striped Silk Surround
• Date: early 1600s
• Culture: Turkey, Bursa or Istanbul, Ottoman period
• Type: Textile
• Technique: silk, gilt-metal thread; lampas weave
• Dimensions: Overall: 141 x 68.4 cm (55 1/2 x 26 15/16 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 2007.13

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Mackie, L. (2015). Symbols of power : luxury textiles from Islamic lands, 7th-21st century. Cleveland, OH New Haven, CT London: Cleveland Museum of Art, Distributed by Yale University Press.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.