Chintz door curtain (1800s): Art, History and Details

Chintz door curtain (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Lightweight white cotton cloth was transformed into this beautiful chintz, admired for its vibrant and durable colors, stunning pattern, fine quality, and rarity. Peacocks and a variety of birds appear amid vines with fanciful blossoms in the niche field and main border. Striking end borders feature blossoms in leaf-outlined diamonds on alternating ground colors of white, mustard, red, and blue. The complex chintz technique involving hand drawing, block printing, bleach, mordant, and dyes was developed in India. By the 1600s and 1700s, chintz was designed to target European and Asian markets and often featured large tree-of-life patterns. Chintz was also made in Iran by the 1400s, but this rare door curtain from the 1800s is among the oldest known examples.

Object facts

• Title: Chintz door curtain
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Iran, Isfahan, Qajar period (1779–1925)
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Cotton: plain weave; chintz; hand drawing and block printing: bleach, mordant, and dye
• Dimensions: Overall: 213.7 x 135.9 cm (84 1/8 x 53 1/2 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 2014.20

Collection credit

Sundry Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.
• Mackie, Louise. “Acquisition Highlights 2014: Textiles and Islamic Art.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 55, no. 2 (March/April 2015): 20-21.

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.